


nothing so bright and delicate

by punkfaery



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (well it's happy if you ignore everything that happens in 160 anyway), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic Jonathan Sims, Canon Asexual Character, Canon-Typical suicidal ideation, Caretaking, Developing Relationship, Emetophobia, Exhaustion, First Time, Getting Together, Good Cows, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Miscommunication, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Post-159 but pre-160, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Sharing a Bed, Sickfic, Slow Burn, as a treat, jon's lack of self-care is its own character, martin can have little a kebab, things will be ok eventually i promise, ungodly amounts of stammering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkfaery/pseuds/punkfaery
Summary: A series of unplanned sleepovers.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 180
Kudos: 1548





	1. season one

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a one-shot and ended up being five chapters, so... stay tuned, I guess? The title is a (paraphrased) quote from one of Keats' love letters to Fanny Brawne, the full text of which can be found here: https://englishhistory.net/keats/letters/fanny-brawne-11-october-1819/. In other news I've fallen into a TMA pit and can't get out, please send help.

“Statement of June Hitchens, given July 7, 2015.”

It’s half-past eleven, although time rather seems to lose its meaning down here, amidst the cramped rooms and dusty shelves where no daylight penetrates. Jon’s mouth tastes awful. When did he last eat? Breakfast, probably, but he can’t remember what he had. Doesn’t matter. He’ll order something in when he gets home.

_“I’m being followed by a man with no face. I’m quite sure about this now, even though I know how mad it sounds. I spent so long trying to convince myself it was my imagination – the drugs, or the drink, or just my paranoia getting the better of me – but I can’t ignore the facts. It’s him that started all this. If I knew what he wanted from me I might be able to stop it. But I don’t. And I can’t._

_“The police won’t help. I’ve been to them twice now, the most recent time being last month, and they haven’t bothered to hide their contempt for me. I’m just another crackhead to them, not worth more than a minute of their precious time. I haven’t been back since. I’m not going to go back. There’s nothing anyone can do for me; I know that, now, and – ”_

The door opens.

He jumps violently, knocking over the mostly-empty cup of tea sitting at his left elbow. “Who – oh, for God’s sake, Martin, can’t it _wait?”_

Martin shrinks back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I, er, didn’t realise anyone was still here.”

“Just knock next time, please,” Jon says. He realises that he’s been unconsciously massaging his temples and forces himself to lower his hands. God, his head hurts. Probably another tension headache. He shifts, wincing at the twinge that goes through his neck, and rolls his shoulders.

Martin’s footsteps come closer. He says, “Are you all right?”

Typical. Jon squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them wide. It’s no use. The sense of total immersion that always comes over him while he’s reading, as if a great wave has swept away all remnants of his identity and replaced them with nothing but the words on the page, has passed. He is himself again. It is not an improvement. “Fine,” he says flatly, and gets to his feet.

There’s a rushing sensation in his head. The world dissolves into static, black spots sparking at the edges of his vision, and Jon finds himself clutching the edge of the desk with hands gone unaccountably numb. He hopes that he is not about to collapse. Martin will never let him hear the end of it. Gritting his teeth, he white-knuckles the desk and focuses determinedly on staying upright, and gradually the rushing feeling fades and equilibrium reasserts itself. He straightens up fully and gives Martin a look, daring him to say something.

Predictably, Martin returns the look with one of his own: mingled concern and disapproval. “It’s almost midnight, Jon. Shouldn’t you be going home?”

Jon’s instinct is to snap at him, but he bites it back. Martin’s the one actually living here, which means it’s a fair enough question (though still an irritating one). “I will in a moment. I just need to finish off this recording and then I’ll go.” He gives his body a few seconds’ warning before crouching to pick up the fallen mug. Thankfully, it’s unbroken. A small puddle of cold tea has collected on the edge of the desk and is starting to drip on to the floor; he mops it with his sleeve. “For that matter,” he says, grimacing at the sensation of damp cloth against his skin, “shouldn’t _you_ be asleep?”

There’s a brief pause. Then Martin shrugs. It looks offhand, but Jon isn’t fooled. He sees the stiffness in his posture, the way his mouth twists slightly to the side before he speaks. “I’ve not been sleeping too well recently. Just keep thinking about stuff. I know she can’t get in here, I do _know_ that, but… It’s the ‘what-if’. And I keep going over it in my head and planning what I’d do if she turned up and how I’d get out and – _and,_ I’m rambling. Sorry. Look, I just came in here to get my sandwich, have you seen it?”

“Your…? No, I haven’t.”

“You sure? I thought I left it in here earlier.”

“Tim probably ate it.”

Martin huffs a laugh. “Sounds like him.”

For a moment neither of them says anything. Jon realises that there’s a noise in the background, a faint whirring – so familiar that it no longer registers – and reaches out to stop the tape recorder. He’ll have to finish that particular statement later. Martin has thrown him off. “Do you have something else to eat?” he says.

“There’s some biscuits and stuff in the breakroom, and – I think a curry? Might be past its sell-by, though, I need to check.”

Jon knows the one he’s talking about. He makes a face. “Ugh. That’s got to be at least a month old. Why don’t you just go out and get something?”

Another shrug. Martin’s picking at a hangnail, and doesn’t seem eager to reply. Jon is just opening his mouth to say something else – what, exactly, he doesn’t know – when the tape recorder clicks back on.

They both stare at it.

“Is, um,” says Martin. “Is it meant to be. Doing that?”

“Some sort of glitch, I expect,” says Jon, knowing full well that “a glitch” is basically just technician-speak for “thingummy”, and only a few steps up from, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

Martin looks unconvinced. Understandably so. After all, tape recorders switching themselves on is not exactly an everyday occurrence. At this point, though, Jon’s stopped wondering. He’s come to accept that there is something not quite right (he refuses to say 'spooky') about The Magnus Institute. If it were possible to measure oddness in the same way as, say, radioactivity, his Geiger counter would be ticking away like nobody’s business.

Quite suddenly Jon wants nothing more than to be out of there – to be _outside,_ in an open space away from the filing cabinets and sickly greenish lighting and the smell of hot, recycled air. He reaches out to turn the tape recorder off again. And stops. What would be the point? “Just go and get yourself something to eat. I’m heading home in a bit, once I finish up, but I’ll probably still be here when you get back.”

Martin shakes his head. “I’m fine, really.”

He doesn’t sound fine. “You’re scared,” Jon says.

“No!” says Martin, too quickly.

Jon gives him a look.

“…maybe a bit,” Martin amends, quietly.

The words come out almost without his permission: “Would it help if I went with you?”

“Oh,” says Martin. “Well. That’s very kind, but you really don’t have to.”

“I’m going that way anyway.”

Martin fidgets. He’s still tugging his hangnail, which has started to bleed. Jon fights off the impulse to reach out and pull his hand away. Instead, he tells him, “Get a jumper. It’s cold.”

It is cold. Frost has already begun to form on the grimy pavement, and Jon’s foot slips on the step as they went down, almost sending him sprawling. Martin catches his arm. He jerks away. “Sorry,” Martin says, lifting his hands and holding them, palms out. “Just thought you’d probably had enough of nearly falling over for one day.”

“Yes, _thank you,_ Martin.”

That jumper really is awful.

“There’s a chippy just up the road, I think,” says Martin. “And the Co-Op should still be open, unless – it’s not a Sunday, is it?”

“Wednesday. Almost Thursday, technically.”

“Right. Right, yeah. You lose track of time a bit down there, don’t you?”

“No natural light.”

“Mm.”

They walk up the road towards the chippy, not speaking. Jon twists his hands into his pockets, trying not to shiver, and glances left and right to make sure nothing is out of the ordinary. There is only the dark street, and up ahead the small row of off-licenses and takeaways lit up in neon yellow.

When they come up to it, Jon eyes the posters in the window with faint disgust. They are peeling and look older than the actual shop. There’s a picture of some salad, coloured the kind of green that you just don’t get in nature, and the rest is all chicken wings and kebabs loaded with enough grease that the photos themselves seem to glisten faintly. He resolves to stick to chips. “Right,” he says. “Food.”

“Food,” Martin agrees. They go in.

It’s stiflingly warm inside and smells of vinegar. They hang awkwardly around by the counter, waiting for the order to come through, surrounded by the chatter of other late-night customers and the hum of the deep-fat fryer. Their food arrives after about ten minutes. Predictably greasy, but at least it’s hot. Jon picks up the polystyrene tray, wrapping some napkins around it to stop it from burning his hands, while Martin counts loose change out on to the counter. “Paying separately or together?” the man behind the counter wants to know.

“Separately,” Jon says, at the same time as Martin answers, “Together.”

Their eyes lock in challenge.

“I can get this,” Martin attempts.

“Don’t be ridiculous, there’s no need for that.”

“But I’d like to.”

“I do need an answer at some point,” says the man.

“Oh, for – ” says Jon, and he takes a tenner out of his pocket and shoves it across the counter. “There. What’s the change? One fifty? Keep it. Let’s go.”

 _“Jon,”_ Martin says, anguished.

“It’s a chicken kebab, Martin, it’s not exactly going to break the bank.”

He pushes open the door and steps back out on to the street, taking in a generous breath of fresh air. (As fresh as air ever gets in London, anyway.) It’s colder than ever, and when he exhales it comes out in a pale cloud, like someone spilled bleach on a black T-shirt. At least now he has a trayful of chips to stop his fingers from getting frostbite.

Behind him the door opens again and he hears Martin’s hurried footsteps. “All right,” he says, drawing level with Jon, still fumbling with various coins and receipts, “if you won’t let me pay you back, then… at least let me walk you to the station?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Well, I’m going to anyway. Also, thanks. That was nice of you.”

“Don’t go on about it,” Jon says. “It’s fine.”

Except it isn’t fine, because the tube has stopped running.

Of fucking course it has. He should have expected that, but he doesn’t normally leave this late, except on weekends, and then there’s the night tube, so it’s never a problem. Swearing under his breath, Jon opens his phone and looks up bus times. The quickest journey is almost two hours, and the bus isn’t even due to arrive for another thirty-five minutes. He scrolls frantically through travel options. Nothing is coming up.

He’s stranded.

“What are you going to do?” Martin says.

He’s wringing his hands, something Jon hasn’t thought people did in actual real life. “Good question,” Jon snaps, and sees Martin recoil minutely.

“Get an Uber, I suppose,” says Martin. “Or… well.” He tails off.

Jon waits. When no follow-up occurs, he prompts, “Or _what?”_

“You could just stay at the Archives overnight,” Martin says in a tiny voice. “There’s a futon somewhere, I think, or you could have the cot. I’m not tired anyway.”

“Don’t be absurd, I’m not kicking you out of your bed. And I haven’t got any of my _things,_ I can’t simply stay the night on a whim – ”

“What things do you even need? Toothbrush? Deodorant? You can get those at the shop.”

Jon breathes out hard through his nose, staring at his phone screen without really seeing it. His eyes have gone a bit blurry. It could be the chilly air or it could be simple tiredness. Maybe both. “I can’t,” he says.

“Jon,” says Martin, “you’re being stupid again.”

“No, I’m not, I just – what do you mean ‘again’?”

“Listen.” Jon might be terrible at subtext, but even he can tell that Martin is trying very hard to be patient with him. “Even if you do make it back home, you’re only going to get about three hours of sleep before you have to come in again the next day. It doesn’t make _sense.”_

Jon puts his phone back in his pocket. Presses both palms against his eyes. They make a squeaking sound when he rubs them, which is a bit weird and probably not good, and OK, so _maybe_ Martin has a point. “Fine,” he says. “Yes. All right. But I’m not taking the cot.”

“We can argue about that later. Come on, I still need to go to the shop.”

Jon trails awkwardly behind Martin as he wanders up and down the aisles, basket piling ever-higher with a variety of cans and bottles and microwaveable meals – does the Institute even _have_ a microwave? – and various other non-perishables. And a toothbrush, Jon notices. “Let me pay for that,” he says.

“It’s only a toothbrush,” says Martin. He’s got both hands full now, one clutching the shopping basket and the other fumbling for his wallet. “It’s not exactly going to break the bank,” he adds, mocking Jon’s tone. “Just grab me that tin of tomatoes and we’ll call it even.”

The tomatoes are on the second shelf from the top, and he has to stand on tiptoe to get at them. When he turns back he glimpses Martin quickly smothering a laugh. _Damn._ Jon was rather hoping that he hadn’t seen. "All done?" he says, a little sharply, and deposits the tomatoes in the basket. "Come on, then."

They go through self-checkout and begin to make their way back towards the Institute. Jon sneaks a glance at the shopping bags. There is a comb sticking out of the top. “What’s that for?” he says, pointing at it.

“Er… your hair?” Martin gives him a sidelong look. “Let’s be honest, it does need it.”

Jon tries to say thank you. What comes out instead is, “I don’t… use combs.”

“I really, really believe that,” says Martin.

Jon decides that this is the last time he will try to do anything nice for another person.

Once they're back inside Martin leads the way, down the maze of corridors and into the small storage room where he’s staying. The futon remains elusive; Jon doesn’t much care. He’s slept on worse things than a bare floor. Martin has brought some of his things over – when did that happen? – and although they don’t do much to make the place feel homey, the little indications of human habitation lend it a sense of character that is almost entirely absent in the rest of the building. A few books are piled here and there (mostly poetry), and a CD player, and a lamp in the shape of a moon, and a suitcase that presumably contains even more terrible jumpers. There’s a peace lily sitting on one of the shelves. The lack of daylight doesn’t seem to bother it much; its leaves are still green, the single white flower standing tall and proud above them. “Is that yours?” Jon asks, nodding towards it.

“Yeah,” Martin says. “Don’t really know my neighbours well enough to ask them to plant-sit for me, and I thought she’d probably die if I left her at my flat without watering her – I mean, she’ll probably die anyway, but I wanted to keep an eye on her. She seems to be doing all right so far, though.”

“’She?’”

“Oh, I – I mean, I just think of it as a her. Not sure why.” Martin's ears have gone red. He ducks his head and digs into his meal.

Hm. That’s – oddly endearing. “Does she have a name?”

“Not yet.”

“Call her Gertrude,” Jon suggests.

Martin shrugs. “OK.”

They eat sitting on the cot, leaning against the wall, and he’s forced to admit that the food isn’t actually as terrible as he feared. Borderline pleasant, in fact. “So what do you do in here all day?” Jon says.

Inwardly, he cringes. Bad conversation starter. Bad. Martin doesn’t seem to mind. “Catch up on research, mostly,” he says, “and sometimes when I can’t sleep I listen to audiobooks – they’re quite soothing, you know? I’m halfway through Harry Potter right now. Never actually read it before. Well, I suppose I’m not really reading it _now,_ but it amounts to the same thing.”

It sounds like a pretty lonely way of whiling away the hours, but Jon decides not to point that out. Instead, he says, “You know, I could bring you some actual books. If you wanted.”

Martin goes an interesting shade of pink. “Oh, wow. Well. That’d be really nice of you, but I don’t really – I can’t get on very well with actual books? Like, physical books. I’m dyslexic, so… But you can, if you like, I just. Might take a while to get through them.” He stutters to a halt, glancing down at his now-empty carton as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

“I didn’t know you were dyslexic,” Jon says.

“Why would you? It’s not come up before.”

Jon eats a chip without really tasting it. His brain helpfully decides to offer up a slideshow of all the times he’s chewed Martin out for being slow, or stupid, or incompetent, or having frankly abysmal spelling, and informs him that he might have been, perhaps, just a little bit of a dick.

Jon tells his brain to shut up. It’s not his fault. He doesn’t know much about all this stuff. Dyslexia and dyspraxia and so on – he’s aware that those conditions exist and that some people have them, but that’s about it. Georgie used to pester him to go to the university's wellbeing service and get assessed _(come on, it can’t hurt!),_ but he resisted. Once he got as far as picking up one of the forms and taking it home. He only got halfway through it before crumpling it up, inexplicably discomfited and annoyed. _Do you find it difficult to make and maintain close friendships?_ was the first question, followed by _Do people frequently describe you as ‘stiff’ or ‘pedantic’?_ and then _Do you experience over or under-sensitivity to sounds, touch, smells and tastes?_ Jon dislikes labels. He dislikes being pathologised even more. He crumpled up the form and threw it away and didn’t think about it again, or at least tried very hard not to. “You should have told us when you applied,” he says now, digging his thumbnail into the polystyrene until it gives way.

“I thought they might not give me the job if I did.” The bit of polystyrene breaks off. Jon crumbles it into dust between his fingers. “Anyway,” Martin says, “it’s not important. I don’t even know how much longer I’ll _have_ a job here.”

Jon glances sideways at him, alarmed. “You’re not leaving?”

“Oh, no. No, God, I hope not. But things feel a bit fragile right now, don’t they? Dunno exactly how it’s all going to pan out, but it might be good to have a backup plan. Just in case it all goes weird.”

“Being trapped in your house by worms for a month doesn’t qualify as weird?”

“Weird- _er,_ then. Anyway, I thought I might try and get a job at the British Library, if they’d have me. Or UCL – they’re always hiring. I checked their employee reviews. They seem pretty positive and, y’know, normal, so that’s a bonus.” He hunches his shoulders, abruptly self-conscious. “Well. I’m just batting ideas around, I suppose.”

Jon isn’t sure why the idea of Martin resigning bothers him so much. “You’ve really thought about this, then,” he says.

“Maybe? A bit. Right now it seems like we’re… heading towards something? Something big. Not sure _what,_ exactly. ‘S just a feeling.”

Well, that’s nice and vague, isn’t it? Jon does get it, though. Ever since Martin stumbled in looking like six kinds of hell and fresh off a month-long siege by a woman made of worms, the world has felt… well, not safe, it’s never been _safe,_ but up until now the danger had felt a comfortable distance away. Something that happened to other people. Like the Archives was protecting its own. No longer. “I know what you mean.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“I’m just scared,” Martin says. “All of the time. Like something really bad's going to happen at any moment. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“Not at all.”

Martin smiles at him, or tries to. It turns out a bit wobbly. “When this is over,” he says, “we should all take a holiday.”

Jon makes a displeased sound. He’s now dismembered most of his polystyrene tray and piled the remains on his lap, like a tiny igloo. “Ugh. No.”

“What? It’d be good for you, you know. You could get out. See the world. Meet some new people.”

“I don’t like people.”

“Well, that’s silly, you haven’t met all of them.”

“I have met enough of them to know that I don’t like them,” says Jon, with dignity, and he stands up to put the sad remains of his takeout tray in the bin. A snowdrift of polystyrene crumbs falls from his hands. He winces slightly as his grandmother’s voice rings out in his brain: _oh, for heaven’s sake, Jon, look at this mess, why you can’t just_ eat _your food instead of playing with it I’ll never know –_

A shuffling sound from behind him makes him turn around. Martin is on his feet too, tugging the blanket off the bed. And one of the pillows. “Here, you take these,” he says. “Sorry, I know it’s not much.”

Jon frowns. “You’ll be cold.”

“And you’ll have a crick in your neck. We can suffer together.”

Reluctantly, sensing that protest is futile, he accepts the offering and lays the blanket out on the carpeted floor. He could, of course, go to sleep in a different room – but Martin might be offended if he did that, and besides, it’s sort of. Nice. The company. Not having to fall asleep alone. Jon wasn’t much for sleepovers when he was a child, partly because he was never invited to any, so it’s all a somewhat novel experience. “Thank you,” he says. 

They talk for a while longer, empty meaningless stuff, until Martin starts making noises about feeling a bit out of it, and Jon takes the hint and lies down. Martin leaves the moon lamp on. It’s the kind with a dimmer, and he turns it to the lowest setting before switching off the overhead light, so the glow isn’t particularly bothersome. If he closes his eyes he can’t even notice it. “Goodnight.”

“Yeah, g’night,” Martin says around a yawn.

He goes to sleep long before Jon does. Jon watches him for a while, which is undeniably creepy, except what else is there to look at? The suitcase? Gertrude the peace lily? Martin’s hand is by his face, palm upward, slightly curled. Jon thinks, unprompted, that if he wanted to, he could reach up and take it. Which is ridiculous. He doesn’t want to. He pulls the borrowed blanket almost all the way over his head and closes his eyes. It smells nice. Not of anything, in particular – just a general nice sort of smell.

Martin is a heavy sleeper. When he breathes it’s very slow and very quiet, so quiet that it’s almost noiseless – _the sleep of the dead,_ Jon thinks, which seems like much too ominous a phrase to apply to this situation. Besides, Martin doesn’t look dead. He looks peaceful. Calm. Jon is, he has been reliably informed (thanks, Georgie), a terrible sleeper. Always has been. Even before all this. He kicks and thrashes, steals the bedclothes, jolts awake at odd hours, holds one-sided conversations that mostly just sound like gibberish, and – on one memorable occasion – mistakes his sleeping partner for an intruder and shoves them out of the bed. (Sorry, Georgie.) On the plus side, he does have the cat-like ability to fall asleep pretty much anywhere. Face down on the desk, usually, although there’s always the risk that Martin will walk in and give him that “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed” face.

Whether it’s the slow, regular sound of another person’s breathing or simply his own exhaustion catching up to him, he can feel sleep coming on almost instantly. His brain slows. The world turns soft and grey at the edges, darkness drawing in. As he drifts, a voice in the back of his brain speaks up. It says, very quietly, _Safe._

Jon sleeps, and does not dream.


	2. season two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place somewhere in between Episode 75 (A Long Way Down) and Mag 76 (The Smell of Blood). Any inaccuracies are entirely my fault; please let me know in the comments if you spot anything out of place.

On the morning of February 5th, Jon wakes up feeling like complete and utter shit.

It’s not just the headache. That, he could cope with; he’s had enough of them over the years that it takes nothing less than a full-on migraine to put him out of commission. No, the real problem here is the sore throat. And the blocked sinuses. And the chest pain, and the dizziness, and the hot-and-cold shivery prickly feeling that keeps running up and down his body…

Oh, fabulous. He’s _sick._

Jon reaches for his mobile. (Well, ‘reaches’ is a generous term; what actually happens is his arm goes out and flails around for a bit, then slaps down on the table and coincidentally happens to land on his phone.) Pulling it towards him, he opens up the contacts page and finds Tim’s number.

Then he stops.

Considering how their last conversation went, he highly doubts that Tim will even pick up the phone when he sees who’s calling. Even if he does, speaking with Tim these days is. Well. It’s just not a particularly pleasant experience, and he’s eager to avoid another blazing row.

Who else is there? Martin – no, no, best not. Things have been a little awkward between the two of them since Jon accused him of Gertrude’s murder. Funny, that.

There’s Sasha. He chews the inside of his cheek. Sasha has been… distant, lately. Unusual for her. She’s always been the chatty one, the first to suggest after-work drinks or organise seasonal parties, the person who goes and does all the customer-facing stuff. Recently, though, it’s like sharing the Archives with a ghost. A friendly ghost, and one who seems perfectly happy to go on errands and do whatever minor investigative tasks are sent her way, but a ghost nonetheless.

Elias it is, then. Although he’d better make sure he can actually talk, first; considering the way his throat feels, it’s possible that his voice is completely gone. He coughs experimentally, then winces. It _hurts._

“Elias, it’s Jon here,” he starts to say, and cringes at the hideous rasp that’s emerges from his mouth. Christ. If anyone hears that they’ll probably try to have him exorcised. He cannot let Elias hear him sounding like this. He refuses. It’s just – it’s not professional. It’s embarrassing.

Could he text? No, probably not. From the few glimpses he’s had of Elias’s office, he seems to only own one telephone: a squat, cream-coloured thing, with an old-fashioned dial and speaking tube arrangement. Elias likes his analogue technology. (Well, not so much _analogue_ as _prehistoric,_ really, but everyone has their little quirks.)

Lying there, Jon tries to think rationally. Maybe it’s not as bad as it feels. Colds always act up in the mornings, don’t they? Jon covers his face with his sweaty hands and contemplates the relative pros and cons of staying home vs. sticking it out and going into work. Even if his voice is too wrecked to record statements, there’s still a metric ton of filing that needs to be done, and research to be conducted, and corrections to be made… The weight of it all bears down on him until his chest feels like it will crack under the pressure. Then he realises that said pressure is in fact just a cough trying to come up, and he rolls to one side and convulses, wheezing helplessly.

When it’s over, he presses his face into the cool patch on the pillow. Everything aches. If he could just take the morning off… just a few hours…

No. It’s no use. He can’t just languish at home when there’s so much still to be done. He’ll get behind, and anyway, leaving the Archives unguarded doesn’t seem right. Especially not now. Martin might be off the list of suspects, but that still leaves at least three people whose intentions are dubious at best. Someone needs to be there to keep an eye on them, and if that someone has to be him – well. So be it.

He gets out of bed and immediately has to sit down again, breathing deeply to curb the nausea that is churning in his stomach. When it’s passed, he goes into the bathroom. The cabinet is understocked, but he locates a packet of paracetamol and a bottle of cough syrup, the thick brown stuff that tastes like nail varnish remover. He takes a swig. Gags. Manages, just about, to keep it down.

This is a good start. He’s managing. He will continue to manage. Jon resolves to spend the rest of the day keeping to himself and interacting with the others as little as possible. They already hate him. He’s unlikely to improve their working relationship by passing on whatever revolting virus currently has him in its grip. He dresses awkwardly, wincing as he pulls on his shirt. The fabric feels wrong. It prickles against his skin, every point of contact an itch that makes him want to just dig his fingers in and _claw_ at himself _–_ He curls his hands into fists, forcing down the temptation. There’s cornflakes in the cupboard, and a half-pint of milk, but the thought of eating makes him feel sicker than ever.

He makes a cup of coffee instead. That tastes wrong, too. All the same, he drinks it, and finds that the pain in his throat – while still present – is lessened a little. This is a good sign. Maybe the rest of the symptoms will ease off too, once the meds kick in and he starts feeling a bit more awake.

Yes. Maybe.

The train journey is, unsurprisingly, horrible. It’s never _fun,_ exactly, but as he stands in the middle of the crowded carriage with his head pounding and one hand clutching the safety handle, he finds himself fervently wishing that he’d given in to temptation and stayed home after all. Everything seems amplified. Everything seems incomprehensible. The rattle of the train, the fluorescent strip-lights, the prickle of sweat under his arms, the feeling of people pressing around him and into him… it just builds and builds until he’s certain that if he opens his mouth he’ll either scream or vomit. Neither option is a pleasant one. Jon clenches his teeth together and takes deep breaths and holds on to the handle like grim death until they get to his stop.

The walk to the Institute feels about a hundred times longer than usual, but by the time he gets his keycard out and lets himself in he’s feeling a little better. Still not great, but that’ll pass. It’ll pass. It has to.

He takes the lift, unwilling to risk the stairs. When the doors hiss open at the basement level, he lurches out and almost collides with Martin, who’s clutching a heap of papers and is apparently on his way up. “Sorry,” Martin says, seemingly reflexively, and then he looks at Jon again and blinks. “Oh. Wow. You look, er…”

He sighs. “Terrible?”

“I was gonna be more tactful, but. Yeah. What happened?”

“Nothing _happened,_ I’ve just… come down with some sort of bug. It’s fine. You shouldn’t get too close.” Jon makes a cursory attempt at shouldering his way past. Unfortunately, the corridor is narrow and Martin is broad and also, currently, refusing to move.

“If you’re sick, why are you still at work?” he says, crossing his arms. “Just go home.”

“Nh. Later.”

_“Now.”_

“I can’t,” Jon explains, intelligently. “I’ve got stuff.”

“What stuff?”

Jon opens his mouth to elaborate and is hit by a coughing fit so violent that it physically doubles him over. When he straightens up again, his head spins.

“Right,” Martin says. “That’s it. Come with me.”

He takes Jon by the shoulders and forcibly steers him into the corridor. Jon, still dizzy from coughing, stumbles along, unsure how to protest. They pass through the breakroom. Tim is leaning against the counter playing some sort of game on his phone, and glances up as they pass. “Hi, boss,” he says, somehow managing to imbue both short words with a healthy amount of contempt. “Where are you two off to, then?”

“I’m going to call a cab,” Martin says. “Jon’s got some sort of bug.”

“Well he’d better not fucking give it to me,” says Tim.

Jon tries to say _I’m still here, you know,_ but as soon as he opens his mouth he starts coughing again. This time it doesn’t stop. “Just get rid of him,” Tim says to Martin, who nods and grabs Jon’s arm and drags him out of the door, up the stairs, and into the lobby.

There, he leans Jon up against the wall and orders an Uber. Jon watches him do it. Although the coughing has subsided he still feels weak, shaky all over, like his muscles have forgotten how to work. His instincts tell him to protest, but he's tired. He's just so tired.

Maybe, he thinks, it’s easier to simply let this happen.

The car arrives, and Martin helps him down the front steps and out into the street. He’s expecting that. What he’s _not_ expecting is for Martin to go around and open the door on the other side, before getting into the cab with him. Jon rolls his head over and squints at him. “Martin? What’re you doing?”

“Taking you home, obviously.”

“I can take myself home.”

Martin just rolls his eyes and buckles his seatbelt. Jon is about to argue further when the motor starts and the car rumbles into life down the road. Short of pushing Martin out of a moving vehicle, there’s nothing he can actually do.

He folds his arms and fumes silently to himself. The effect is somewhat lessened by the fact that he has to keep unfolding them to cough into his sleeve and mop his eyes, which keep spilling trails of liquid down his cheeks. He feels disgusting. He probably looks disgusting, too. Why Martin wants to share a car journey with him he can’t imagine, but each to their own.

The cab pulls up outside Jon’s flat. Martin helps him out, which he refuses to feel grateful for, and thanks the driver. Then the car pulls away, and Martin tows him towards the building and into the lift, keeping a solid grip on his arm.

“Thank you,” Jon says, very begrudgingly, as the lift rises towards the fourth floor.

“If you really want to thank me, you can let me come in and heat this up for you,” Martin says. He pulls a carton of soup out of his bag and brandishes it. “It’s chicken and mushroom. Nicked it from the breakroom. You’re not vegetarian, I hope?”

“No,” says Jon.

What he actually means is _No, you can’t come in,_ but Martin takes it to mean _No, I’m not vegetarian, and by all means come inside and make me soup, that would be ideal, thank you so much._ Before Jon can put his thoughts together enough to say anything further, they are in his flat and he’s sitting at his kitchen table while the room while Martin clatters about, opening cupboards.

Martin. Martin is in his kitchen. It’s a surreal sight. How did they even get in here? Jon supposes he must have turned the key and opened the door at some point, but it’s honestly hard to recall; everything has started to blur together, dreamlike, so that one action no longer follows on logically from another. The world has become a time-lapse of disconnected images. “Sorry – where you do keep the saucepans?” Martin says over his shoulder.

“Cupboard under the sink,” Jon says automatically. Then, “Martin, you really don’t have to – ”

“It’s just soup. Where’s your thermostat?”

Jon shakes his head, too dazed to answer.

“It’s freezing in here,” Martin says.

“What?” That’s not right. It was boiling this morning. He remembers that. He turned the thermostat down because he was too hot and he was sweating. Now that Martin mentions it, though, he realises that he’s shivering, the sweat cooling on his torso as if he’s been lying in an ice bath for hours.

“Jon, I think you might have a temperature,” Martin says.

Jon almost laughs. _And next up on Mastermind we have Martin Blackwood, special subject the incredibly bloody obvious_. He puts his face in his hands. His skin feels hot and too tight for his skull. “Mm,” he says into his palms. “Thermostat – um – it’s, it’s just out in the hall. Next to the front door.”

“OK, great,” says Martin.

He goes out. Jon remains slumped in his chair. Nothing makes sense. His head feels as though a demented miner is drilling holes in his brain.

Footsteps, the creak of a door, then – “I’ve turned it up a bit. Not much, but it might help. Do you think you could manage some tea?”

Jon raises one shoulder, then lowers it.

“Just soup for now, then,” Martin says.

“’M not hungry.”

“Well – yeah, but you should still eat something. Did you have breakfast?”

He shakes his head.

“Dinner?”

He can’t remember. Probably. His throat was already starting to feel itchy and sore last night, though, so it’s possible that he just skipped it and went straight to bed. Martin takes his silence as negation. “In that case, you definitely need to eat,” he says. “Just – try and have at least a bit, OK? And then bed. You really do look like shit. Sorry. But it is true.”

“Thank you,” says Jon, in what he hopes is an acerbic tone.

The stove sputters as Martin switches on the burner. Jon hunches down still further, swallowing. He can smell the soup even through his blocked-up nose. It smells good. And Martin is right, much as he hates to admit it. He does need to eat something. Even if it is the absolute last thing he feels like doing.

“There,” Martin says presently, and puts the bowl down in front of him. “Try some of that.”

His tone brooks no argument. Jon has a spoonful, swallows painfully, and waits.

Nothing terrible happens.

He dares another one. Still fine.

“You don’t have to eat all of it,” Martin says.

He’s hovering anxiously near the table, tugging the sleeves of his jumper down over his hands. Jon nods and licks the spoon. To his surprise, he finds that he is starting to relax. He’s still not _happy_ about this, but it’s a nice change to have someone actually care about his wellbeing. Even if that someone is Martin. “It's good,” he says.

Martin half-smiles. “Just so you know, I’m still angry with you.”

“I know.”

“You were really out of order.”

“Sure.”

“I’m not going to have it out with you now, because you’re ill and it’s not the time, but I just wanted you to know that Tim has every right to be pissed off. So do I, actually.”

Jon swallows down another mouthful of chicken soup. He is beginning to feel a bit strange. “I shouldn’t have pried,” he says.

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“I did apologise,” Jon says. He takes another mouthful.

This is a mistake. The soup doesn’t taste of much – probably because his blocked nose is interfering with his taste buds – but his stomach decides in no uncertain terms that it’s not having any more of this nonsense, and rebels. Something sour rushes up the back of his throat. He clamps a hand over his mouth and nose.

“Oh, shit,” Martin says. “Is it – are you – ?”

Jon tries to say _I’ll be right back,_ but he knows with complete certainty that opening his mouth will result in disaster. Instead, he lurches up from the table and stumbles towards the bathroom.

He barely manages to get the toilet seat up before he’s falling to his knees and throwing up what little food he actually managed to eat, his stomach contracting as it rejects its contents. His throat is being shredded from the inside. He gags and coughs and braces himself with one hand on the floor, tears of exertion and pain blurring his vision, and silently curses himself, and Martin, and soup, and life in general.

There’s a knock on the door. “Jon? Jon, are you OK?”

He starts to answer. Another heave cuts him off, doubling him over.

“Can I come in?”

And Jon – Jon is crying properly now, shoulders shuddering with a combination of retches and sobs, and he doesn’t even have the energy to be embarrassed about it, because this is fucking _miserable_ and he has had _enough._ He wants to die. He wants Martin to leave. He wants to be looked after. He wants to be left alone. He wants Martin to come into the bathroom and help him sort himself out, hold his hair out of the way, rub his back. He wants –

“Oh, God. Jon, I’m sorry, but I’m coming in,” Martin says, and the door opens.

Jon keeps his head lowered. _Don’t look at me,_ he thinks, uselessly. But it’s already too late.

“Oh,” Martin says, very quietly, and then his footsteps come closer, soft shuffling sounds on the tile. Jon feels him crouch down beside him. A hand lands on his shoulder, warm and solid.

“Sorry,” Jon says, and hiccups. “This is disgusting.”

“It’s fine. I mean, it’s _not_ fine, but it’s – Do you want me to go?”

Jon doesn’t have the words. He shakes his head instead, beyond propriety and shame, and chokes on another sob.

“All right,” says Martin. His hand on Jon’s shoulder is just on the cusp of being too much: too much heat, too much sensation, too much _everything._ But it’s OK. It’s good. “Is that all of it, do you think?” he says.

Jon opens his mouth to say _I think so_ and is immediately proved wrong. The pain is indescribable. He retches again. “All right,” Martin says, and then his hand is in Jon’s hair, gathering it back at the nape of his neck. “There you go. It’s all right.”

The dry-heaves keep coming, one after another, but the main event seems to be over. Strings of bile hang from his mouth and he coughs and spits until they are gone. The tears are still coming, though. They run down his face and drip off his chin. Jon wipes his mouth and sniffs, ineffectually, teeth chattering. “I think... I’m done,” he says, voice thin and raspy, and tries for a laugh. It comes out sounding slightly hysterical.

Martin helps him lean back, props him against the side of the bath. “OK,” he says, still unaccountably calm. “OK, breathe. You’re fine. Deep breaths.”

Jon does his best to obey while Martin stands, discreetly flushes the toilet, and goes out of the room. Jon hears a cupboard open. Then a tap running. He doesn’t get up and look. He doesn’t think he could even if he wanted to.

A few moments pass before Martin re-enters. “I – told – you,” Jon gasps, as he shuts the door behind him. “That I – wasn’t – hungry.”

“You did,” Martin says, crouching back down next to him. He’s holding a glass of water. And tissues. “I’m sorry, I should have listened. Can you try and drink this? It’ll help get rid of the taste.”

Jon lifts the glass with shaking hands, takes a gulp. Some of it runs down his chin. Martin pretends not to notice. Jon doesn’t especially care. Whatever lingering impulses he might have had towards protecting his image, maintaining a professional barrier, _et cetera,_ are long gone. The pain barrier has been crossed, the working relationship crumpled up and stamped upon. He couldn’t sink much lower than this if he tried. “Thank you,” he says, sounding (he hopes) a bit more normal.

“Don’t thank me. I did basically just invite myself in.”

“You did.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s… fine.” He laughs again. Everything is very funny all of a sudden. “I’d rather you didn’t make a habit of it, though.”

Even though he’s sitting down, the bathroom floor has started to tilt from side to side like the deck of a ship. That doesn’t seem right. He focuses intensely on it, willing it to stay still. The swaying only gets more violent. This is appalling. This is a violation of Euclidean geometry and good sense. He braces both hands on the tile.

“Er… do you want to maybe lie down?” Martin says, eyeing him worriedly. “You’re sort of… you know.”

And he sways from side to side, in what is probably supposed to be an imitation. It just makes Jon’s head spin more. “I’m not,” he murmurs. “It’s just – this stupid room. It keeps _moving.”_

Martin reaches up and grabs the toothbrush and toothpaste. Shoves them into Jon’s hands. “Brush your teeth. You can’t go to bed with your mouth all pukey, it’ll feel disgusting. I’ll just go wash up.”

“This room’s moving. I didn’t ask for a moving room.”

“Just brush your teeth, please,” Martin sighs. “I’ll be back in a tick.”

Jon does his best. The toothbrush bristles are absolute sensory hell, but he’s past caring. He stands, clinging to the edge of the sink, and rinses and spits. His reflection in the mirror stares back at him, looking like death warmed over. Tired, sweaty, unshaven, all drying tear-tracks and worm scars and dark under-eye circles the size of shopping bags – it’s a wonder that Martin can stand to look at him at all. He smears a wet flannel over his face, getting rid of the worst of the mess. Then he walks on trembling legs into his bedroom and starts to get undressed. It’s a laborious process; none of his limbs seem to be behaving, and his hands are so clumsy that he can hardly undo the buttons on his shirt.

He manages it, though. As he’s pulling on a grey T-shirt that doesn’t feel _too_ dreadful against his skin, Martin knocks again. “Come in,” Jon says. His voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater.

Martin does. He opens the door and gives Jon a quick once-over. “Oh, you changed? That’s good. Get some sleep. I’ll check on you in a bit.”

“Has anyone… ever told you,” Jon gets out, “that you’d make an _excellent_ hospice worker?”

There’s a bit of a silence. When he looks up, Jon sees that Martin’s face is doing something odd: trying to smile, but in a way that looks like the smile could collapse at any moment. “Why’d you say that?”

Jon rather thinks it’s obvious, but he clarifies anyway. “Well. Because… you’re quite good with sick people? Very, er, capable. It’s impressive.”

Martin leans against the wall. His fingers knot tightly into the wool of his jumper – twisting it, untwisting it, twisting it again. “It,” he says, “that’s, I mean, not really. I’ve had a lot of practise.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Martin doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he mumbles, “Just… get some sleep, OK?”

He’s upset. Jon has no idea why. Did he say something wrong? His verbal filter, never good at the best of times, seems to have deserted him utterly. He swallows. “I – I’m sorry if I was rude, or… I just meant that – ”

But Martin is gone. The door closes softly. Jon stares at it, feeling bewildered, and then gives up trying to work out what just happened. That’s an issue for future-him. He slumps into the tangled snarl of bedclothes and curls up, closing his eyes.

* * *

When Jon next wakes up, it’s dark.

His throat still hurts, as does his head, but the weird floating feeling – that sense that he’s sitting somewhere outside himself, watching his own body get on with life without him – is mercifully absent. He rolls over. His phone isn’t there. The digital alarm clock, though, informs him with blinking green digits that it is 23:15. He’s slept for (he counts back) thirteen hours.

Then he remembers Martin.

Martin. Martin who brought him here and made him soup and – oh, _Christ,_ held his hair back while he vomited into the toilet and rambled feverishly about lord knows what and – Jon rocks back and forth in horror. There is no coming back from this. Even if he was delirious at the time, he has still violated every professional boundary going. Martin will never see him the same way again. Some people might argue that he has already violated various professional boundaries as a result of his clandestine investigation work (he refuses to call it ‘stalking’), but there’s a difference between being seen as paranoid – which he isn’t! – and simply being pathetic – which he definitely is! – and oh, God, he cannot deal with this. He can’t deal with any of this right now. Jon grips fistfuls of his own hair and tries to breathe normally.

_I’ll check on you in a bit._

Wait. What if Martin’s still here? Jon lets go of his hair and stares off into space, mind racing. He didn’t hear the front door open or shut. Then again, it’s entirely possible that Martin simply left while he was too feverish (or too unconscious) to notice.

There’s only one way to find out. Jon swings his legs out of bed for the second time that day and stands on legs that feel much too watery for his liking. Then he makes his way towards the living room, feeling his way along the wall. The floor is silvered with moonlight. The TV is on, muted, playing some late-night game show. And Martin –

\- Martin is asleep on the sofa. 

It doesn’t look like a comfortable position; his head is tilted to one side in a way that’s bound to hurt in the morning, and one leg is twisted awkwardly underneath him. It must be numb by now. The curve of his shoulder rises and falls gently with his breathing.

Jon looks at him for a moment.

The airing cupboard is mostly just a storage unit for fabric-based junk – spare duvets, torn pillowcases, scratchy throws that he can’t even look at without feeling itchy – but Jon finds what he’s looking for quickly enough and tugs it out. A weighted blanket, a gift from Georgie some years ago. It’s grey and fleecy, surprisingly soft. He put it away after they split up and hasn’t got it out since. Partly it’s stubbornness. Partly he just doesn’t like being reminded of his own fuckups any more than is necessary.

He shakes it out, making sure there are no spiders lurking in the folds, and then drapes it carefully over Martin, who shifts and murmurs something unintelligible before settling again. Jon watches for a moment to make sure he’s not going to wake up. Then he makes his way towards the door, trying to keep his footsteps quiet, to let Martin sleep.

The creaky floorboard by the door ruins his plan.

He flinches at the long, low groan, standing frozen with one foot pressed down on it, unable to move. Wildly, he hopes that Martin hasn’t heard – but that hope is dashed as he hears a shuffling sound from the couch. “Jon?” Martin says, sounding muzzy. “’S’that you?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Jon whispers. “I’m fine, go back to sleep.”

Martin does not go back to sleep. He sits up, turns his head, sees Jon standing motionless by the door. “God, I’m sorry,” he says, voice still groggy and rough around the edges. “I didn’t mean to – what time is it? I just sat down for a minute and then…”

He breaks off into a yawn, covering his mouth. Now that Jon’s eyes have begun to adjust to the dark, he can see that Martin’s hair is a mess: curls sticking up every which way, one strand flopping sideways into his left eye. Jon refuses to find it endearing. “I-it’s fine,” he says, and at last dares to take his foot off the floorboard. Predictably, it squeaks. He cringes. “I just woke up now. Um…” He swallows. “I’m. Sorry. About all that – well, about earlier. I can’t imagine that that was particularly enjoyable for you.”

“Didn’t seem like you were having much fun, either,” Martin says. He glances down at himself, spots the blanket that has now slipped down to his waist. “Oh. Was this, did you – ?”

Jon is thankful for the gloom. His face is burning, and even though his skin is too dark for a blush to be really obvious, there’s basically no way Martin wouldn’t notice. “You looked cold,” is all he says.

Martin struggles further into a sitting position. “How’re you feeling now? You sound a bit better.”

“I do feel rather more alive than I did earlier,” Jon admits. A cough bubbles up; he stifles it in his sleeve. “Not that that’s saying much.”

“Yeah, you had me a bit worried. Can I switch a light on? Seems kind of stupid to be sitting here in the dark.”

“Go ahead.”

Martin gets up and clicks on the standard lamp, illuminating the room in a warm glow. “There we go. Do you wanna sit down? I mean, not that I'm inviting you to sit down in your own house or anything, because that would be weird. Um. What time did you say it was?”

“I didn’t. It’s a quarter past eleven,” Jon says. Checks his watch. “Almost half-past, now.”

“You serious?”

Jon nods.

“Shit,” Martin says, and something about the way the word sounds in his mouth makes Jon’s face burn all over again. He’s tempted to put a hand up to his ear to find out if it’s really as hot as it feels. “I’m sorry, I’ve probably massively overstayed my welcome. Please feel free to tell me to clear off, or whatever.”

“No, no,” Jon says distractedly, “that’s quite all right. I, er, you can stay the night – stay _over,_ that is, if you want. I don’t have a spare bed, I’m afraid, but there’s an air mattress somewhere, I think?”

“Oh, no. No, I’m happy with the sofa,” Martin says. “But are you sure? You’re not, I don’t know, saying yes just to be polite?”

Jon’s legs are starting to shake properly now. Whether it’s illness or simply a lack of food he doesn’t know, but regardless he decides to take Martin up on his offer and sit. He wobbles towards the sofa, gripping the arm for balance, and half-sits, half-flops down on it. “Martin,” he says, “I can quite truthfully tell you that I have never once said ‘Yes’ just to be polite.”

Martin swallows a laugh. “Yes, OK, fair point.” He moves the blanket to one side and stands up, stretching first one leg, then the other. “Be right back. Where’s your bathroom?”

“Second on the left.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

He leaves. Jon pulls his legs up on to the sofa, wriggles slightly so that they’re curled under him, and twists his hand into one corner of the blanket. The TV is now showing ads. He finds the remote and clicks through the different channels, sound still muted, not really paying attention – until he hits on one that’s showing a rerun of _Most Haunted._ He feels his lip curl.

Predictably, that’s the moment that Martin returns holding two steaming mugs, his hair slightly less chaotic than before (he must have flattened it down in the mirror). “I found your teabags,” he says, only slightly shame-faced. “Made yours herbal, though, so hopefully it won’t be too rough on your stomach. Ah!” he says, catching sight of the TV. “I used to love this show!”

“Please don’t say these things to me,” Jon says.

“Oh, come on, like you haven’t watched it before.”

“For your information, I _haven’t”_ – he has, but there’s no reason for Martin to know that – “and quite frankly I don’t understand the appeal. It’s all scare chord this and infrared that and sceptics who are pretending to be believers pretending to be sceptics. How anyone can take it seriously, I've no idea.”

“Well _,_ yeah, ‘course, but that’s what makes it fun. It’s a guilty pleasure, right?”

The sofa dips as Martin sits down again, putting the two mugs on the coffee table. Jon reaches for his and sips it gratefully – even if he’s not throwing up any more, his throat still feels as though somebody hot-glued razor blades to the inside of it. The tea is lemon. He didn’t even know he _owned_ lemon tea. “You want me to leave it on, then?” he says.

Martin, he notices, is now rather closer to him than he was before he got up. Previously they were on opposite ends of the sofa. Now there’s just inches between them. Jon can feel the warmth of him all up his left side. “Yeah, sure, leave it on,” he says. “Don’t think either of us are going back to sleep at this rate. And – is there any sound? Although subtitles would be fine, too.”

“I’m beginning to regret allowing you to stay over,” Jon mutters, but he unmutes the programme all the same.

 _“Now he’s talking about the name Alice. She must have been linked here,”_ intones the psychic of the week in a strong Yorkshire accent. Then, with sudden dramatic emphasis: _“She didn’t mean to kill him! Who was it, Alice? Alice? Who did you kill?”_

Yvette Fielding clamps her hands over her mouth in theatrical horror. One of the sound guys is crying into his cappuccino.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” says Jon.

“You be quiet,” says Martin, enraptured.

They watch Yvette and her cameraman, both lit up a sickly green by the night-vision cameras, ramble down a series of winding corridors, while Martin pulls the blanket back over himself and Jon tries not to scoff. Although it _is_ kind of fun, he supposes. In an odd way. It’s like working as a homicide detective and then coming home and binge-watching CSI. 

The thin sweatpants that he wears to bed aren’t doing much to keep out the chill. Jon fidgets, toes curling. Spends a minute or two wrestling with himself. Then another shiver goes through his body and that decides him: he’s ill, and it’s his blanket, and he’s going to have at least a third of it, and that’s that.

Reaching out, Jon takes hold of the nearest corner and tugs it over his own legs, sighing as the slight pressure leaches the tension away from his muscles. The blanket is, thankfully, big enough to cover them both. The unfortunate side effect is that he ends up shuffling even closer to Martin. As their shoulders brush he feels himself go rigid. What if this is too far? What if Martin pulls away, or worse, tries to put an arm round him? Not that that would be a _bad_ thing, as such, but he just didn’t expect – hasn’t _planned_ for it – and he’s never been very keen on casual touch, what if he doesn’t like it, what if he flinches by accident and then Martin gets upset and blames himself and everything goes to shit –

But all Martin does is flash a quick smile in his direction and nudge shoulders with him, just lightly, before turning back to the TV with what appears to be total focus. Jon closes his eyes and lets out a long, quiet breath. He’s not sure if he feels relieved or disappointed.

 _“It was just like – a little, a tiny comet,”_ the camera-man says. _“And it just went, dead slowly, like that – from one side to the other.”_

 _“Oh, aye. That’ll be an orb,”_ his colleague replies wisely.

Jon shifts. Takes another sip of tea, swills it around. There’s a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. Sort of like heartburn, he thinks, except nicer. Martin’s hair, lit up bronze and gold by the lamplight, keeps flickering in his peripheral vision like a lit match.

_“…Hey! It’s moved! See, it’s moved – well, seven or eight millimetres, right out of the line.”_

_“Has anyone been in here?”_

_“No, no, it’s a controlled area…”_

“Actually, I think I might’ve seen this episode before,” Martin says. “Could be wrong, but I feel like there’s a bit, later on, where the woman’s husband gets terrorised by that ghost in the prison yard? And he’s all, like, face down on the ground – ”

“And they do that really awful reconstruction,” Jon says, because he can’t help himself, “with the shaky camera-work – ”

“Yeah! Yes, that’s the one!”

“ – and she’s screaming in the background and going _Ahh, help me!,_ and then it cuts to the crowbar falling down from the ceiling – ”

 _“Exactly!_ Wait a minute,” Martin says, “I thought you said you’d not seen it?”

“Oh, shut up,” says Jon, and settles down to finish his tea.


	3. season three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *suffering begins*  
> *suffering continues indefinitely*

A dark room.

Waxworks in ill-fitting clothes stand poised in every corner, their synthetic hair unbrushed, their fake skin glistening. They aren’t very good waxworks. Some of them don’t even look like people. All of them watch Jon with blank smiling eyes. He gradually comes to memorise their exact positions, and routinely checks them just to make sure they haven’t moved. But no, they remain where they are: forever static, forever smiling.

He sleeps. It’s not really sleep. It’s a shallow ditch that he crawls through whenever his mind strays too far afield. The dreams he has there are thin hungry things, and he never stays under for long. On the rare occasions he manages to dig himself a little deeper, he is invariably wrenched back to the surface by Nikola’s plastic hands on his skin, forcing his head back, her hard fingers slick with lotion. (It’s a long time before he’ll be able to use moisturiser again, that’s for sure.) He gives up fighting, after a while. It’s not worth it. And he is tired.

Two men – or one man with two voices? – file in and out of the room, back-and-forthing in exaggerated Cockney accents. Jon only registers bits of their conversations. Nikola is impossible to ignore, though; her stolen voice is bright and relentlessly cheery, even as she rambles on about how she will skin him, how she will sketch out the guiding lines with her filleting knife and cut along them, flensing skin from muscle and muscle from bone, how easily his outer casing will slip away and leave behind a bloody squealing thing. Jon snarls at her through the bad-tasting cloth that covers his mouth. Swears and spits muffled insults and screams in protest as he’s manhandled, turned one way and another, untied and re-tied. It doesn’t make any difference. Eventually he stops doing that, too.

He sleeps. He doesn’t sleep.

He dreams about a dark room and when he wakes up he is still in a dark room. He dreams of plastic hands and a painted-on smile. He dreams of eyes. Occasionally he is permitted to stand up and eat, or drink, or go to the bathroom; Breekon and Hope are there with him the whole time, to make sure that he doesn’t try anything. (He doesn’t. He’s learned.) After, he is taken back to the waxworks room and restrained once again, and so it continues, and it continues.

Time is beginning to blur into itself, like ink dissolving in water. He sleeps. He dreams that someone else is there with him. He thinks he might find this all a bit easier if he wasn’t alone – but if that was the case then there would be two people in danger, not just one, so maybe it’s better that it’s just him. He dreams that someone is talking to him and saying his name. Not Nikola, or her henchmen. Someone else. He dreams that he loves someone who loves him back. He sleeps. He doesn’t sleep.

Eventually, there is a door.

* * *

A dark room.

Not the same one. This room is smaller, and there are no waxworks – only a desk and an old tape recorder whose red light blinks on and off, on and off, on and off. Jon sits slumped at the desk with his head pillowed on his arms. The clock ticks. The recorder whirrs, picking up nothing except silence and more silence, and occasionally a few snatches of ambient noise: the shift of fabric, a quiet breath.

Sleep doesn’t seem to want to come, so he lifts his head and checks the clock. It’s not even nine pm yet. Everyone else has gone home, though – or at least he assumes they have, because he hasn’t heard another voice or footstep for a while now. Jon contemplates going outside and having a smoke, or maybe going to the shop to grab a sandwich, which prompts the realisation that it’s Thursday night and he hasn’t eaten anything since Tuesday. This briefly sends him into a panic – does he not _need_ to eat, now? – and when he stands up and feels the familiar dizziness of regular old hunger, there’s a perverse relief in it. He might feel no desire to eat, but his body still requires ordinary human food, which means (right?) that at least part of him is still human (isn’t it?).

Carefully, trying not to make his joints crack any more than necessary, he stands and makes his way to the old documents storage room that used to be Martin’s. At some point, while he was lying low at Georgie’s and being kidnapped and chasing after false leads, Jon’s landlord served him an eviction notice that he never got to see. He supposes his things are in storage, now. Either that or they’ve been sold to make up for the rent that he didn’t pay for over six months. He can’t bring himself to care. It’s just stuff. The few things that he managed to salvage are all here: a cardboard box of clothes, a washbag, a few books. This is what it comes down to, he thinks. Everything that once made him a person now fits neatly into a single box.

He finds a sandwich, just a day or so old, in the kitchen. He eats it. He gets changed. He lies down. He doesn’t sleep.

Except that he must do, eventually, because a sudden bright light wakes him and his muscles go stiff all over again. Shapes of things loom out at him, fuzzy and unfamiliar. One of the shapes is human. It stands with one hand on the light switch, silhouetted against the open door. Even half-awake, Jon recognises it. “Martin?”

“Oh. I didn’t realise anybody was in here,” the figure says.

Jon sits all the way up and reaches for his glasses. The bedclothes are tangled in a heap in the middle of the mattress. “What’s happened?” he asks with a mouth that feels like it’s full of cotton. “Is everything OK?”

Martin is shaking his head, already turning to leave. “Everything’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Sorry I woke you, I’ll just… I’ll just go.”

The words spill out without his permission: “Don’t leave.”

Martin freezes with one foot half-off the ground and one hand reaching for the door. He stays there, unnaturally still. For a moment Jon wonders what he’s doing. He mentally replays his own words, and hears the faint static of compulsion underlying them.

Horrified, he covers his mouth. Then he realises that he still needs to speak in order to lift it, and takes it away long enough to gabble, “God, no, you can leave, of course you can leave, I’m sorry, I – I didn’t mean to – that was an accident – ”

“Don’t have a conniption,” Martin says, his pose loosening. He remains where he is. “Wow. You really can’t control it, can you?”

“I – I _can,”_ Jon says, hunching his shoulders. “Sort of. But I have to concentrate, and sometimes, I forget. I really am sorry.”

“Right.” Martin shifts uneasily from foot to foot. “Well, I suppose I’d better…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, but instead makes a half-hearted motion towards the open door. In a last-ditch attempt to keep him talking, Jon starts to ask, “What are – ” and then stops, sighs, begins again. Choosing his words as carefully as possible: “I am curious as to what you are doing down here.”

Martin flushes slightly. “Ah. Well,” he says. “Funny thing, that. I was actually planning on sleeping here, too.”

Jon, still unwilling to ask any direct questions, tries to convey curiosity with a head-tilt.

“Some nights,” Martin says, “if I can’t face going back to my place, or if the weather’s bad, or I’ve got a lot of stuff on my plate, or – or if I just want to feel _safe_ for once – well. I stay here. In document storage.” He looks mildly relieved at not being compelled, which should make Jon feel better, but actually makes him feel significantly worse. Not mind-controlling your co-workers sort of seems like the bare minimum; Martin shouldn’t have to feel _grateful_ for it. “I, I didn’t know you’d be here too. Didn’t think about it, really. Stupid of me. But it makes sense. You lost your flat, right?”

Jon nods.

“So, what, you’re just living here now?”

“For the moment, yes.”

Martin pulls a face. “I’m speaking from experience when I say that does not sound like fun.”

“It’s not that bad. At least – ” A laugh bubbles up; he doesn’t know why, nothing’s particularly amusing. “At least here I’m not about to get kidnapped, or dragged out into a forest and almost shot in the head, or trapped in an endless falling dimension. It could be worse.”

“Er, right,” Martin says, looking a bit alarmed. “And is all that hypothetical, or…?”

“I wish. No. It’s been – a busy few months.”

“Kidnapping… Is that how you got that burn on your hand?”

“Oh,” Jon says. He draws the hand in question out from underneath the blanket and examines it, turning it from side to side. “No. That one was courtesy of Jude Perry. My fault, I’m afraid. Apparently when a member of the Cult of the Lightless Flame asks for a handshake, it’s a good idea _not_ to take them at face value.” The burn is mostly healed now, stretching across his palm and up his wrist, the finger-marks raw and shiny and the colour of undercooked chicken. Thank God he’d been able to dissuade Georgie from physically dragging him to A&E he has a feeling that something like this would be tricky to explain to the doctors, even more so than the wormholes and the knife-scar that crosses his trachea.

“Looks like it hurt,” says Martin.

“It did. You know,” Jon says, and makes sure not to meet Martin’s gaze directly when he says the next bit, “you could still stay the night here. If you wanted, that is.”

Martin doesn’t immediately say no. What he does do is draw in a breath and then let it out again, careful and slow. “I’m not sure,” he says, and then cuts himself off, swallowing.

“You don’t have to,” Jon says hastily. “It was only an idea.”

“Mm. Look, I don’t know, Jon. It’s been a long week, and I could really do with sleeping in an actual bed. My back’s not been too good lately.”

“There’s an actual bed here.”

“Which you’re sleeping in.”

“We could share.”

Martin, caught off-guard, blinks rapidly. “Um…”

“That is to say, obviously nothing untoward, of course not,” Jon adds, eager to reassure Martin, who looks… Jon’s never been good at reading facial expressions, but he wants to say _disappointed?_ That doesn’t make sense. But he’s not in the right headspace to think about it right now, so he just barrels on. “It just seems logical, doesn’t it? We’re both here, and the – the bed’s big enough for two, and this way we might actually get a decent night’s sleep.” The more he talks, the more stupid the idea sounds. He wishes he’d never said anything. “Unless you’re not comfortable with that?” he adds, trying to backtrack. “I can understand why you wouldn’t be. All the same. You can. I don’t mind.” He almost says _The offer’s on the table,_ except. No. Nope. That makes it sound like he’s – _propositioning._ ‘It would be nice to have you’? Christ, that’s worse. He clamps his mouth shut and desperately wills himself to stop talking.

“No, no, I’m OK sharing,” Martin says. It doesn’t sound like he’s OK with it. “But are you really sure? I know you like your privacy, and all that.”

“Martin,” Jon says. “I’m _offering.”_

Martin hovers there for a moment more, his lips pressed together tightly. Then his shoulders slump. “All right,” he says. “All right. I’ll stay.”

Jon holds very still, trying not to give away the sudden feeling of warmth and relief that swamps him. It feels like he’s sunk into a hot bath. “Do you have something to wear that’s not – that?” he asks, gesturing towards the jeans-and-button-up combo.

“I do, yeah. I – I’ll go and get changed.” Martin looks as if he wants to say something else. In the end, though, he just jerks his head and hurries out.

The room feels much emptier than before. Standing up, Jon tries to fix the bed so it’s a bit less of a disaster, shaking out the blankets and punching the pillows, even flattening some of the wrinkles out of the undersheet. His heart is hammering so hard that it’s almost painful. _Get a grip,_ he tells it. Nothing untoward. That’s what he said, and he meant it. Nothing untoward. Just two friends sharing a bed, for convenience’s sake. Perfectly normal.

(He’s not sure exactly when he began to think of Martin as a friend.)

The door opens and Martin comes back in, dressed in loose grey trousers and a tank top. There are freckles on his arms, Jon notices dizzily, and feels a funny sort of tremor go through him, making his hands quiver. He fights to keep his expression neutral. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Martin says.

There’s a brief pause while they both try to figure out how to do this. For some reason Jon’s pulse is still fluttering, hummingbird-quick, and a stupid part of him worries that Martin will actually be able to hear it. Or see it, beating its way right out of his chest like he's a cartoon character. “Shall I – ” he starts, at the same moment Martin says, “Do you want – ”

They both stop again and laugh, a little awkwardly. “Let’s try that again,” Martin says. “Do you prefer the side against the wall, or facing the door?”

“The wall. If you don’t mind.” He rather likes the idea of Martin being in between him and the door, shielding him from anything that might decide to come through it. _Nothing untoward,_ Jon reminds himself. He removes his glasses and stuffs them in between the bed and the wall, squinting as the world slides out of focus once again. At least this way he doesn’t have to make eye contact.

“All righty, then. Er, how about you lie down and I’ll…?”

Jon nods, already sliding under the covers and rolling to face the wall.

“OK,” he hears Martin say, very softly. Then, louder, “Just getting the lights!”

“Go ahead.”

There’s a click. The room goes dark. Jon clamps down hard on the instinctive panic. It’s fine. He’s in the Archives, and Martin is here, and nothing bad is going to happen, at least not yet. He’s safe. He’s safe. If he says it enough times, he hopes, it will eventually start to feel true.

They end up back-to-back, Martin facing the door, Jon curled inwards against the wall. The darkness is absolute. Even though they aren’t technically touching, the presence of another person so close by feels almost electric. He thinks about their feet brushing, their calves touching, and swallows. For all that he talked about getting a good night’s sleep, he’s not feeling particularly restful.

Jon squeezes his eyes shut. Waits for a minute. Five minutes. Ten. The darkness presses in. His skin itches. He thinks about painted-on smiles, and flesh that melts and bubbles like wax, and knives, and doors, and vertigo. He thinks about a gun to his head and a knife to his throat. He thinks about eyes. He thinks about touch that isn’t really touch and smiles that aren’t really smiles, and his stomach rolls, a sourness rising at the back of his throat.

The mattress dips further as Martin shifts. In a final attempt to get himself under control, Jon clenches his fists tightly and thinks _safe, safe, safe,_ and prays that his body will, at some point, get the memo.

Unfortunately, his tension doesn’t go unnoticed. “Jon?" Martin whispers. "Are you still awake?”

“Mm,” Jon says into the pillow. He wants Martin to keep talking. He doesn’t know if he can talk back, though, which is a problem, as conversations tend to require more than one participant. 

More shifting of blankets. Then, “You're not cold, are you?”

Jon makes a vague noise of dissent.

“Oh. Just – you’re shaking a bit.”

“Am I?”

He hasn’t noticed.

“I’ve got a spare jumper somewhere, if you want to borrow it.”

Jon thinks about Martin’s selection of variously awful jumpers and, in spite of it all, feels his lips twitch. “I’m not quite that desperate,” he says.

Martin snorts with laughter – and just like that the tension is broken, that curious charge in the atmosphere dissipating. “How dare you!” he says. “I’m trying to be nice here.”

Jon rolls over on to his back so that their shoulders are pressed together. “I know,” he says, and savours that feeling of warmth, of skin against skin, the closeness, the way it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt. Feeling daring, he turns his head to stare in the direction of Martin’s face, safe under cover of darkness. “Thank you all the same,” he says.

“What, for the jumper?”

“For everything.”

There’s a silence. Then Martin’s hand finds Jon’s under the covers and takes hold of it, linking their fingers together. His palm is warm and solid. He squeezes Jon’s hand once, lightly, then lets go. Jon's chest aches. “Don’t thank me,” he says. “Just… try and stay alive, yeah?”

The Unknowing hangs between them. Talking about it will make it seem real, so Jon elects not to broach the subject. Instead he just wets his lips, and says, a little hoarsely, “I’ll do my best.”

* * *

A dark room.

Inside: a high white bed. Metal safety rails. The smell of disinfectant. Three chairs, pushed close together, and on top of them a sleeping figure. The hard vinyl covers do not make for a good night’s rest. He tosses and murmurs, head pillowed on a folded-up coat, and as night falls outside the lights of the neighbouring wards are dimmed, one by one.

The other figure in the room does not stir. Nor does the green line on the screen beside the bed, which is flat, has been flat since the day he was brought in. No heartbeat. No breathing. For all intents and purposes, no life. 

Martin dreams that he is wandering in a vast grey city. Some parts of it resemble London, and some do not. The shops he passes are all closed: windows shuttered, metal grilles gleaming faintly in the light of the streetlamp. The sky is grey. The air, grey. In the dream he sometimes passes houses that have people in them. He hears the sound of a television, people talking and laughing, a vacuum cleaner, popcorn popping in a microwave. He wants to knock on the door and ask – beg, even – to be let in. But he doesn’t. He already knows that nobody will answer.

Jon dreams that he is on a train. The train rattles onward through an endless black tunnel, the yellow poles melting with a searing heat, a woman clinging to the safety handle as the flesh on her arms melts and runs off her like wax. And then, quite suddenly, he is standing on a city street. He is alone. For the first time in what feels like months, the sky above him is empty. No ceaseless watcher. No great eye staring down unblinking from the heavens. He supposes he should feel relieved about this, but somehow that awful grey emptiness is just as bad: devoid of clouds, birds, aeroplanes, contrails, all the usual paraphernalia of a London sky. This, he thinks, is the colour that’s left behind when everything else is taken away. Not even a colour, but a _lack_ of colour.

Someone else is there.

Whoever it is, they’re walking away from him. He calls out, and his voice is swallowed up as if he’s shouting underwater. He quickens his pace, but with the strange logic of dreams, every step he takes seems to slow him down even more. Why he’s so desperate to make contact, he doesn’t know. Perhaps it’s because this is the first person he’s seen in his dreams that hasn’t looked at him with anger or pity or disgust. Perhaps he’s simply eager to stave off the nightmare, which will – he knows – return at some point and claim him again. But neither of those things can explain the feeling that surged through him when he first saw that figure: a fierce elation, and below that a feeling of safety. Of _security._

The figure is about to disappear around a corner. Jon calls after it once more: pleading, futile.

And Martin turns around.

Of course. Of course it’s Martin. Who else could it possibly be? The familiar shape of him fills in a gap in Jon’s memory that he hadn’t even noticed was there, and he reaches out as though sheer determination can help breach the distance between them. Martin looks thinner than before, tired and desaturated, but Jon doesn’t care. Everything in him is straining to get closer, to reach out, to touch. In the brief moment before everything falls away, he sees Martin’s mouth move, forming the shape of Jon’s name. Sees his eyes widen in recognition and relief.

And then the pavement dissolves, and the sky splits, and the eye opens, and the world collapses in on itself like wet newspaper.

Corridors. He’s in the hallway. He’s walking towards a yellow door and following the sound of someone’s voice, but the voice gets fainter and further away the more he walks. He can no longer remember who it belongs to.

Outside the sun is beginning to rise. The harsh fluorescents buzz and fade, their power diminishing. The figure in the narrow hospital bed does not move. The thin blue blanket does not rise and fall with his breathing. Beside it, curled half-fetal on a row of plastic chairs, Martin Blackwood sighs uneasily and twitches in his sleep.


	4. season four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry

Two weeks after he wakes up from his coma, Jon meets Georgie for coffee.

They don’t go to her flat. Or rather, she doesn’t invite him – suggests instead that they meet at a little vegetarian café in Covent Garden, the kind of place where an espresso costs £3.50 and every available surface is covered in sickly-looking houseplants. They order and take a table near the back of the room. For a while, neither of them say anything. Jon picks bits of lint off his jumper and rolls them between his fingers. Georgie draws shapes on a bit of napkin. Their food seems to be taking ages to arrive. “You wanted to see me,” Jon ventures, after fifteen minutes have elapsed without any break in the silence.

Georgie looks up from her biro doodle of a bedsheet ghost wearing pointy cowboy boots, and says, “I did, yeah.”

Jon waits. Anxiety is thrumming in his chest.

“I just… well, first off I wanted to ask how you’ve been,” Georgie says. “Since. You know.”

“Ah… mentally or physically?”

“Both. Either.”

“Physically,” Jon says, “I’m fine. Better than fine, if I’m honest.”

“What d’you mean by that?”

“As far as I can tell, I can’t actually _get_ hurt – injured, that is – any longer. It’s – ” He forces a laugh. “Really not as comforting as you might expect.”

Georgie nods, slowly. Her fingers tap on the table. “Uh huh.”

She doesn’t sound angry. Or freaked out. That gives him the confidence to continue. “I think,” Jon says, and then corrects himself: “No, I _know_ that I’m not human, now. I’m not sure what I am. Something… else.”

She gives him a quick once-over, then says, “Really? You look human enough to me.”

“That’s not what I – ”

“You’ve got all the trappings. Back, front, sides.”

“ – yes, _thank you_ , Georgie – ”

“A head,” Georgie adds, unnecessarily. “Eyes. How many eyes do you have, by the way?”

“Er. Just the usual amount, I think?”

“Right. There you go, then. Not a monster.”

He looks wretchedly down at his lap. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Then explain it to me.”

He can’t. It’s not that he doesn’t know what he is; he’s explained it already to Basira, when she asked, and seen the distrust in her eyes. He can’t stand to see that same distrust mirrored in Georgie’s. So he just shrugs. Takes a sip of his tea. It doesn’t taste quite right – there’s something off, something missing.

“That wasn’t the only reason I wanted to see you,” Georgie says.

He knows that. Not _Knows-_ knows, but it’s pretty obvious. “All right. Why, then?”

Their food arrives. There’s a brief lull in the conversation while Georgie thanks the server, and then she resumes. “I wanted to let you know that I’m probably going to go off the grid for a while. Not in a big scary dramatic way or anything, but – I just need a bit of distance. Space. Thought I’d tell you beforehand, just so that you didn’t feel like I’d abandoned you or something. It’s not – ”

“Please don’t say _It’s not you, it’s me._ ”

“All right, I won’t, then.”

“Can I still see you?”

She hesitates. Then: “Probably best if you don’t.”

He tries to act like that doesn’t sting, but whatever else he might be, Jon has never been a particularly good liar. “OK,” he mumbles. “That’s. That’s fair, I suppose.”

Georgie rests her chin on her hand, eyes closing for a moment. Gathering herself. “I love you a lot, Jon,” she says. “And I know that you know that. But I can’t be around you right now.”

“Can I ask why?”

He’s careful not to phrase it as a direct question. These days he’s losing control of his abilities more and more often: compelling truth from people with casual questions like _Want anything from the shop?_ or _What’s the weather looking like out there?,_ picking up random useless bits of information… Come to think of it, that’s probably one of the reasons why Georgie isn’t too comfortable around him any more. He waits for her answer, trying not to fidget.

Georgie sighs. It’s not a frustrated sound – just tired, heavy, emptied out. “I don’t know what to say, Jon, OK? We’ve both had a time of it. And I try to say the right things, and I try to be there for you, because I know you’re going through a lot right now – I mean, Jesus, you just lost six months of your life, that’s got to be tough on anyone. I want to help. I really do. But I’m so tired. I look at you, and it just makes me so sad.”

It’s what he expected to hear. That doesn’t make it hurt any less. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to say sorry. It’s not your fault. I just… can’t do it at the moment. Any of it.”

Jon nods. He understands. It’s not Georgie’s fault, either; she’s allowed to want a normal life, or some approximation of it, anyway. “Look after the Admiral for me,” he says.

She gives him of a flicker of her old smile. “I will. And you look after yourself. That’s an order, Jonathan Sims.”

“I’ll try.”

“You’d _better.”_

Georgie hugs him goodbye when they leave. It’s the first time somebody’s hugged him in – well, he can’t remember exactly how long it’s been, but certainly a while – and it makes something in his chest feel weird, like his heart is being wrenched and twisted out of shape. Her perfume is the same kind she’s worn since she was twenty. Something musky. Incense? He’s not quite sure what to do with any of it, so he just puts a hand up and awkwardly pats her back. She lets go too quickly. “Safe journey home,” she tells him, and then she’s walking away, scarf fluttering over her shoulder as she disappears around the corner.

It’s starting to rain again. Jon pulls the hood of his jacket up and makes his way towards the station, the sensation of unfamiliar touch still tingling on his skin. On the way home, he stops off at the nearest newsagent’s and buys a pack of Sterlings, but the smoke tastes all wrong – sort of stuffy and yellowish, like insulation foam or plaque.

Elias would be irritated if he knew. Then again, he probably _does_ know. He’s probably watching right now. Bastard. Jon finishes the cigarette just to spite him, then stubs it out and grinds the end under his heel. He should feel bad about littering. He doesn’t. There are plenty of other cigarette butts down there: scattered across the grubby pavement, like a children’s breadcrumb trail leading from nowhere to nowhere.

Jon’s new flat is little more than a bedsit situated in the east end of Croydon. He’s been living there for just over two weeks now. There’s a small kitchenette, and a living room – mostly unfurnished – and a bedroom, and a bathroom that’s essentially just a tiled cubicle with a rusty shower head sticking out of the wall. The rent is still extortionate. (It’s London, after all.) Thank God money isn’t an issue now. If nothing else, the Institute provides good job security, even if it does come at the expense of personal freedom, health, safety and sanity.

Jon lets himself in and rifles through one of the unpacked boxes, hunting for pen and paper. When he’s found them he sits cross-legged on the bare floor, the pad in his lap, chewing the end of the pen. After a few minutes he scrawls a single sentence across the top of the page: _What am I?_

Jon likes making lists. Enjoys the routine of it, the way it helps him organise his own whirring thoughts into a neat, manageable catalogue. It’s part of what made him a good research assistant. He likes things to be organised. He likes his knowledge to be clear and straightforward. He does not like information that is blurry, or nebulous, or hard to pin down. Well, there’s nothing more nebulous than an identity crisis, so: a list.

He reads the title again, then underlines it.

 _What am I?_ Animal, vegetable, mineral – none of them quite fit, although _animal_ probably comes closest. Except no, no, this isn’t Twenty Questions, he won’t get anywhere doing it like this, not least because the kind of thing he’s turning into isn’t listed on any database. Maybe it would be easier to write a list of the things he can _do,_ instead _._ It’s a good a starting point as any.

So. Point one: he heals fast. Unnaturally fast. Jon puts pen to paper and scrawls, _healing factor._

He can read people’s minds. (Although that’s not quite it. There’s no _reading_ involved. He just… Knows things, the same way he knows that the sky is blue or there are five fingers on a hand.) Right. So. He can’t read minds, but he can retrieve information that he shouldn’t be able to, including locations, facts, places, memories. (That’s not right, either. He can’t choose what information he accesses; something else chooses for him, and drops the knowledge into his brain without his consent.) He writes, _Psychic??_ and then crosses it out. He'll come back to that later.

Point number three. He no longer needs to sleep. Or eat. (He still does both, but only out of habit.) He _does_ need statements, as he learned when he was in the US; going without has the same effect as regular old hunger, making him weak and shaky and blurring his mind. But he has no idea how to categorise that. _Change in dietary requirements?_ Ugh. No. That makes him sound like a cat with colitis. _Trauma addiction? Lack of empathy?_

‘Lack of empathy’ doesn’t fit. He can still feel. He still knows pain, and joy (not much of that these days), and love, and loneliness, and fear. Oh, yes. Definitely fear.

_What am I?_

What is he? What is Jonathan Sims?

He stares at the list. Then he rips out the page and crumples it up.

Ultimately, there are only three things that really matter. Everything else is just padding. It’s not relevant. It doesn’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know.

The real list is as follows. One: he is terrified. Two: he is an addict. Three: he is a monster.

One of these things isn't like the others. One of them can probably be kept in check, if he tries. One of them will get him killed in the end. It’s only a matter of time.

* * *

On the rare days that he doesn’t go in to the Institute, Jon shuts himself in his flat and leaves the radio switched on at all hours, the tuning knob jammed in between stations so that all he can hear is a drone of white noise. It calms him down. Drowns out the constant stream of knowledge that reaches its unwanted, insidious tendrils into his brain, growing like a tree. (Or a cancer.) The days become one long stretch of sleeping (but does he actually sleep?) followed by work (although it doesn’t feel like work). One afternoon he realises that he cannot remember the last time he ate. So he has some toast. It tastes – fine. There’s no relief tied to the action, no empty space to be filled. He washes the plate up and goes back to recording statements.

In a moment of weakness, he phones Georgie. She doesn't pick up. He listens to her answerphone message anyway. It's nice to hear her voice.

He discovers that sleeping pills don’t work on him any more – most medication doesn’t, in fact. He burns through it so fast that the effects are negligible, and whether or not he’s still capable of overdosing, he’d rather not find that out the hard way. (Most of the time. Sometimes, alone in his flat, thinking about Sasha and Tim and Daisy and the countless others who are dead because of him and things like him, he finds himself wondering if it might be better, _easier,_ to just – )

( – no. No, he’s not going to go there. He can’t let anyone else down. Can’t leave the others stranded.)

(And besides, it wouldn’t solve anything.)

One night – one particularly bad night – he wakes up choking on a scream, covers tangled around him and damp with fear-sweat. As he knots his hands into the bedclothes, waiting for his racing heart to slow, he begins to notice certain oddities. _Are_ they odd? The room looks the same as it always has. And yet somehow, imperceptibly, it is changed. Familiar shapes have taken on a strange, menacing cast. The dressing gown on the back of the door could be a tall figure, its long hands hanging curled by its sides; the slit of light coming in from the hallway is broken by a shadow that could be a table but could equally be somebody standing there, waiting to come in; and the darkness outside the window might be the shape of some enormous creature, pressed so close against the glass that it blocks out all light. He watches it, stiff and frightened, waiting for it to move, for the darkness to shift and reveal a staring eye, an eye that will swivel and turn until it finds him – fixes on him –

He reaches out in one swift motion and turns on the bedside light.

It doesn’t help. He can, at least, now see that the objects in his room are simply that – objects, mundane and non-supernatural. But the fear remains nonetheless. It thrums and pulses under his skin, making his whole body feel electric with fight-or-flight energy.

Jon is up before he knows what he’s doing, fumbling into his clothes, grabbing the keys from the bowl on the hall table. His noise-cancelling headphones are on the kitchen counter. He takes those, too, and is halfway down the stairs with one arm still out of his coat before he realises he has no idea where he’s going.

Except that he does. Of course he does. And it’s a terrible idea, really, except he’s going to do it anyway, and when it ends badly he’ll be able to sit himself down and say: _I told you so._

The tube isn’t running, obviously, so he gets on the first bus he can find that’s going in the right direction. He doesn’t need to check the bus timetable. The information is already there, as natural as muscle memory; he Knows that this bus will stop three streets away from Martin’s flat, just as he Knows not to sit near the gaggle of drunk teenage girls at the back because one of them’s liable to throw up on her lap at any second, and Knows that the bus driver – middle-aged, kind-eyed – is suffering from the kind of acute deep vein thrombosis that will certainly finish him off in a matter of years. Or months. The woman on the top deck is contemplating a divorce. Her husband is often gone for months on business trips, except she’s seen his expenses and realised that there are whole weeks unaccounted for. The upholstery on the bus seats is called _moquette_ and is designed to conceal stains and other evidence of wear and tear. The air conditioning hums in the key of E-minor. The longest unchanged bus route, established in 1920, runs from Hampstead to –

Jon starts at a sudden pain and realises that he’s been biting down on his thumb so hard that he’s left toothmarks. It’s an old habit, something he hasn’t done since he was a child. He fumbles for the headphones around his neck and pulls them up to cover his ears, switching on a track of white noise. This is the closest he gets to quiet, these days. Pressing his forehead against the cool glass of the window, Jon watches the night flicker by: crowds lingering outside 24-hour off-licenses, teenagers spilling out of clubs, cars passing in dreamlike silence with their taillights glowing red. Real and ordinary and part of time. He turns up the volume on the white noise and fails at doing breathing exercises for the rest of the trip. When the bus finally pulls up at the right stop, he half-falls down the stairs and stumbles out into the night, shivering.

The doors slide shut. The bus pulls away. He is alone.

Jon reaches for the door in his mind and opens it just a crack, allowing the information to trickle through: _down the main road, second left, big block of flats, third floor, number twenty-six._ This was a mistake. But he’s come too far to turn back now, so he sets off, walking purposefully in the direction of Martin’s flat.

Once there, he gets the lift up to the third floor. Number twenty-six is battered, paint peeling, one of the screws on the letterbox coming loose. Jon notices that at some point Martin had a peephole put in – sensible, really – and is quietly thankful for that. At least Martin will know it’s _Jon,_ and not some kind of horrifying worm-monster come to barricade him in his flat again. Before he can wimp out, he raises his fist and knocks firmly.

There’s silence for a little while. Then the silence is followed by footsteps, slow and shuffling, and the clink of the chain being pulled back. The door opens.

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, before Martin can even get a word in. “I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to talk to me, and you don’t have to, this isn’t – I just had to be around someone, all right? Just. Another person. That’s all.”

Martin stares down at him: all bare feet and creased pyjamas, half his hair gone flat and the other half sticking up. His expression isn’t visible in the gloom. Only the whites of his eyes, shining back. He says, “You could’ve gone to Georgie’s.”

 _She isn’t speaking to me,_ Jon nearly says, and it would be a valid excuse, but it would also be a lie. The fact is, he didn’t even think about Georgie until now. Didn’t even entertain her as a possibility. “I wanted to see you.”

“Right. And now you’ve seen me,” Martin says. “You do know it’s – ” he checks his watch “ – half-past four in the morning?”

“Ah… I do know that, yes, but – ”

“How did you find out where I live, Jon?”

It’s not unkind, the way he says it. But it’s not particularly kind either. Jon shivers and wishes he’d worn something other than a T-shirt underneath his coat – a jumper, or a sweatshirt, or something – and then he wishes that he’d just stayed at home, like a sensible person, instead of showing up at his co-worker’s flat without warning or explanation. He can’t think of what to say. He stares at his shoes instead.

Martin sighs. “Let me guess. You just Knew.”

He nods.

“Jon, I’m sorry, but that’s really weird.”

“Sorry,” Jon says again. The shame is back, making him feel sick and hot all over. He jams his hands into his coat pockets to hide the way they’re trembling.

“Why are you here?”

He swallows. “I, um…”

“Just tell me.”

He can’t.

“Jon.”

The studied patience in Martin’s voice is enough to make his eyes burn. He forces the words out with something close to physical pain: “I truly don’t know. I just need… I need… I need _something.”_

Martin looks at him again. He looks for a little longer than is necessary. Then he sighs. “Come on, then.”

Scarcely daring to believe it, Jon follows him inside.

Martin doesn’t turn on any lights. He simply walks through the shadowed hallway and through a half-open door on the left, which leads – as it turns out – to an unlit bedroom. The bed is a mess. Hardly surprising, given that Martin has only just got out of it. He feels another distant twinge of guilt. “I’m going back to bed,” Martin says. “You can stay, or not stay, whatever you like.” He’s already lying back down, tugging the duvet up and over his shoulders.

It’s not an invitation. It’s not a rejection, either. Jon is not good with situations like this – situations where there’s no clear script, no guidance on what he should or should not do. He sits gingerly down on the edge of the bed, which sinks beneath his weight. This place smells like Martin. He hadn’t realised that Martin even had a smell, but sense-memory takes over and informs him that this, undeniably, is it.

He twists his hands together, unsure of what to do. Lying down next to Martin feels like a mistake. Too presumptuous. Sitting here and staring into the gloom doesn’t quite work, either. On the floor by his feet is something that looks vaguely familiar; he recognises it, after a moment, as a sweater that Martin used to wear regularly.

He picks it up without really thinking about it and holds it in his lap, rubbing his thumb over the dark green wool. Then, on impulse, he pulls it over his head and tugs it straight. It’s big on him – the sleeves trail down past his fingertips, and he can already tell that if he stands up the hem will come halfway down his thighs.

“Please just stop _hovering,”_ Martin says from under the duvet, voice sleep-blurry and annoyed. "In here is fine. Or there’s the sofa. Up to you."

“Yes. Sorry. I – yes.”

Faced with an immediate decision, Jon decides to compromise. He curls into a ball at the foot of the bed with the shape of Martin’s feet under the covers beside him, resting just a hairs-breadth from his spine, and tries to stay as quiet as possible, so as not to disturb him. It’s a bit of a wasted effort, though. Martin is clearly still awake. His breathing is a little too even, his muscles tense and stiff. Jon wants to ask what he’s thinking about. In the end he doesn’t have the nerve. He lies there, equally wide awake, and fights back the urge to start chewing on his thumb again. This is not intimacy. It just feels like it.

Out of the two of them, Martin is the one to eventually break the silence. “Bad night, then?”

He nods, then realises Martin can’t see him and murmurs, “You could say that.” His hand is still throbbing. “Martin, I feel I ought to – well. I wasn’t really thinking clearly when I came over here. Just wanted to see you, as I said. But you didn’t have to let me in. And I didn’t really expect... So. Thank you, for that. You’re a good friend.”

“Friends,” Martin says. “Is that what we are?”

Jon’s breath catches momentarily. His mind races through a variety of possible responses, but everything that comes to mind is equally awkward and embarrassing, and the way his heart is suddenly fluttering in his chest like a dying bird makes it rather hard to think. “What do you think we are?” he asks, and actually manages to sound somewhat normal when he says it.

“Dunno. Two sad people trying to be a bit less sad together?” And Martin laughs. It’s a horrible, brittle laugh that catches in his throat, and it doesn’t suit him at all. “Though it doesn’t seem to be working, so far.”

Not quite the answer Jon was hoping for. “What can I do?” he says, lamely.

“Nothing.”

“Do you want to talk about – ”

“No.”

Jon finds himself wondering how it's possible for two people to exist in this way: so close together, and the same time so impossibly far apart. He tries to force himself to breathe regularly. He is almost successful. “If it makes any difference,” he says, “I really am grateful for… whatever this is.”

He feels Martin’s body hunch beside him in what might be a shrug. “S’alright.”

“No,” Jon says. It suddenly feels vital that Martin knows he isn’t just being polite. He spent so long taking Martin for granted, never thanking him for anything, never wondering what might be going on underneath that eager-to-please veneer. He doesn’t want to keep making that mistake. He doesn’t want to take Martin for granted again, not ever. “I mean it. I am grateful. Not just for, for letting me stay. For everything. For. Well. Putting up with me.”

“I don’t ‘put up with you’,” Martin says. “You don’t always get to be the victim, you know.”

It feels, just a little bit, like a slap.

Jon goes up on his elbows, twists slightly to face Martin. “I’m not trying to be,” he says, doing his best to keep the hurt out of his voice.

“You are, when you say things like that.”

“I’m just trying to thank you.”

“No, you’re trying to make out like things haven’t changed,” Martin says. “But they have. You know they have. And I can’t be what you want me to be. Not right now. It’s too…” He pauses with the frustration of someone who knows what they’re trying to say, but hasn’t figured out how to say it yet. “You came here because you want me to tell you you’re a good person,” he says, eventually. “And I can’t do that. Not because you aren’t, but – Good people aren’t always good, you know? Sometimes good people do awful things just to try and stay alive. And sometimes the only way you can stay alive is to hurt the people you care about. It’s complicated.”

Jon flinches, tries to disguise it. His hands are shaking again.

“I’m sorry,” Martin says. “I’m not making sense. I don't mean to upset you. I’m just not so great with… people, these days? Side effect of the Lonely, I guess.”

He does try not to ask, but even before the Eye took him he was too curious for his own good. The question bubbles up to his lips and spills over: “What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“The Lonely.”

He hears a shift in position. When he dares to roll over and look, he sees that Martin is sitting up, feet pulled underneath him and head downturned. His fingers are tugging at a loose thread on his pyjama bottoms. It’s too dark to read his expression. “You don’t have to tell me,” Jon says, as the pause stretches.

“No, I – I don’t mind. It’s, um.” The loose thread is getting longer and longer. “It’s always empty. Well, obviously. And cold. I feel cold all the time. Everything’s grey. It’s always silent.”

“It sounds awful.”

“It’s not so bad.”

Jon can’t help giving him a disbelieving look. Martin, head still bent, doesn’t see it. “Some parts look just like here,” he says, “buildings, and parks and that, except. No people. Well, it wouldn’t be Lonely if there were people, would it?” He clears his throat. “Mm. Yeah. That really bothered me, at first. I missed them. Now I don’t. I think I’ve got used to it.”

“That’s not exactly a good sign.”

“No. No, I suppose not.”

Despite the strangeness of the situation, the company is helping. Jon is already beginning to relax, his body loosening as it sinks into the unfamiliar mattress. Not for the first time he finds himself compulsively running his fingers over the ruined skin of his forearms, seeking out the pulse of veins and arteries. The quiet workings of the body. Blood, muscle, bone. He might not be human, he thinks, but at least he’s alive. That’s got to count for something. He closes his eyes and draws in a shuddering breath, tracing scars that only he can find in the dark. “Right. I – I’ll let you sleep, shall I?” he says.

Martin doesn’t answer. Only sighs heavily and lies down again, his silence a pointed indicator that the conversation is over.

Jon's not sure when he drops off himself. Only knows that the dreams start up again almost instantly, a double-feature horrorshow in glorious surround sound, and when he wakes it’s with a jolt so violent that he is briefly convinced he’s fallen from a great height. His ears are ringing. Something is twisted around his legs. He jerks, trying to kick it off, and his foot collides with something solid. 

“Ow,” says the solid thing.

It sounds like – but no, that doesn’t make any sense. He asks anyway. “Martin?”

“Hi,” says (apparently) Martin.

Everything is confusing. The window isn’t where it should be. Jon shuts his eyes and tries to work out where he is, and gradually the memories of last night return, drifting up to the surface like silt in muddy water. “Did I kick you?” he says.

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s OK. You looked like you were having a bad dream.”

“I was.”

He sits up carefully. The panic is already easing off, which is unusual; it normally takes him at least half an hour, and several cups of tea, to feel like himself again. The blinds are still drawn tight, but cold daylight has begun to insinuate itself around the edges, an unwanted houseguest encroaching upon their territory. Is it the next day already? Has he really lost that much time? He wets his lips and asks, “How long have I been asleep?”

It comes out sounding more like, “How long’ve bin slp?”, but Martin seems to understand. He checks his watch. “Er… ‘bout three and a half hours, by my count.”

“Oh,” says Jon, feeling his shoulders slump. “Fine. We’ve still got the same prime minister, then.”

“Unfortunately.”

Jon is abruptly conscious of his dishevelled state: unshaven, hair a mess, wearing the ratty clothes that were all he had time to throw on before leaving the house. (And the stolen jumper.) He turns his face away, embarrassed.

“Feeling better?” Martin says.

Jon tests the place where his fear was last night, like probing a missing tooth with his tongue, and finds nothing – only a distant throb of remembered pain. A cobweb is strung across the corner of the room like a sail. He glances nervously about for its occupant, but the corner seems to be long abandoned. “A little,” he hedges. “Did you sleep all right?”

“Not too bad, thank you.” Martin hesitates. In the daylight he looks strangely translucent, washed out. Even his clothes seem to be coloured in shades of grey. “Also,” he says, “you can’t come round here again.”

He’s been expecting something of this sort. The bluntness, however, is surprising. “Why not?”

“You know why not.”

“Because of _Peter Luka_ s _?”_

Jon makes sure to inject as much contempt into that name as he can. He thinks he might have overdone it a bit. Martin doesn’t rise to the bait, though – just says, cool and placid, “Because I’m trying to look at the big picture here. If that means making a few sacrifices… well, then that’s how it’ll have to be. Believe it or not, this isn’t _actually_ about you. I’m trying to be careful.”

“Oh, and I suppose ‘careful’ means putting yourself in danger, does it?”

“I’m not in danger,” Martin says. “I just think it would be better for everyone concerned if we went back to being sad people separately.”

“Will you listen to yourself? That’s not you talking. Martin, he is deliberately trying to keep you isolated from everyone, why can’t you see that?”

“Of course I can see it!” Martin snaps. He pauses, closes his eyes, breathes out. The exhale is shaky. “I’m not stupid, Jon. I know what he’s doing. And I’m going to let him do it. If it means stopping whatever this – this thing is that he keeps talking about, then I don’t have a choice. I have to let this happen.”

“You do have a choice. And I… I’m sorry, but I think you’re making the wrong one. Martin, please listen – ”

“He warned me you’d do this,” Martin says, half to himself.

“Excuse me?”

“He said you wouldn’t trust me. That you’d try and act like you knew better than me.”

Jon laughs. He doesn’t mean to – it just barks its way out of him, sharp and mirthless, and he can see by the way Martin draws into himself that it’s the wrong thing to do, but he can’t stop. “Oh, you’re taking Peter Lukas’s advice now? Well, that’s great, Martin. I’m so glad you’ve managed to place your trust in a, a fucking, an _eldritch fear god_ that thrives on other people’s – oh, that is just spectacular.”

“Thanks for the input,” says Martin. He’s not looking at Jon. He’s not looking at anything. His eyes are fixed on the opposite wall, but Jon doesn’t think he’s actually seeing it – it just happens to be in the way.

Half-pleading now, Jon tries again. “He doesn’t care about you. I care about you. We all do,” he adds, because spending the night in someone’s bed is apparently fine, but telling them you care about them is beyond the fucking pale. Jesus. He takes a deep breath and tries to do his best impression of a sensible, empathic, emotionally-intelligent person. “You’re worth more than – I don’t know, whatever it is he’s offering you. Just don’t listen to him, all right? Don’t let him get inside your head.” 

“I think maybe you should go.” Martin’s voice is quiet, measured. Affectless.

“You’re just saying that because you know I’m right,” Jon says.

“No, Jon, I’m not,” says Martin. “I’m saying it because I’d like you to go. Please leave.”

The daylight is more insistent now. It falls in pale, cold slats across the carpet and makes the dust hanging in the air look half-solid. Jon tries not to say what he wants to say, which is _for God’s sake just stop it, stop this, I can’t stand it._ He says instead, "Sure. OK. If that’s what you want.”

Martin doesn’t answer. Just watches him, blank and steady. 

His coat is abandoned on the floor where he left it. Jon picks it up and pulls it on. Tries to figure out if it’s possible to apologise without totally abandoning the last scraps of his dignity, and decides – ultimately – that it isn’t. So be it. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t. It’s… look, I’m _worried_ about you. He’s changing you. You’re not the same.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be the same,” Martin says.

It would be nice, Jon thinks, if real life was like a tape, something you could erase or rewind or fast-forward at will. Or you could simply tape over it, replacing the bad parts with something better. What would he replace this conversation with? White noise, maybe. Something staticky and inoffensive, something utterly without character. “Just – please look after yourself,” is all he's able to say.

“You too.” And Martin smiles. It’s a weird, empty sort of smile, and Jon finds himself thinking of Not-Sasha: her blank grin, her depthless eyes, the way she seemed to go through the motions of personhood without really understanding how any of it worked. Except this is worse, because Martin is still Martin. There’s just – less of him.

“Right,” Jon says. He fiddles with his coat buttons. “Be seeing you, then.”

He is halfway home before he realises he’s still wearing Martin’s jumper. It’s too late to turn back. Jon tells himself that he will return it if Martin asks, even as he knows that Martin will not ask. He tells himself that he’s not going to make it weird. This attempt at self-control lasts until he gets back and unlocks his front door, and then he capitulates: drags off his coat, tugs the jumper up over his mouth and breathes in deeply, shakily. Inhaling the familiar smell. It’s something. It’s not enough. 

This, Jon thinks, might actually be the root of his problem. Nothing is ever quite enough.


	5. season four, again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap, folks! This last chapter turned out a lot longer than I planned, but it felt - necessary, I guess. Also, who else is scared shitless about S5??? (I know I am. Let's all get ready to suffer together.)
> 
> Additionally: I feel the need to say just how much I love and appreciate every kudos, bookmark, or piece of feedback that I receive on this piece and any other. I am immensely grateful to everyone who takes the time to comment, and while I don't have the time to reply to comments individually, it's important that you all know how happy it makes me to read them. Thank you so, so much! I hope you enjoy reading this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it. See you on the other side~

It’s Jon who finds him.

Jon finds him. Jon leads him out. Jon holds his hand so tight that his fingers turn numb, but it’s the good kind of numb – not the empty, hollow kind that’s been creeping up on him these past few months, so slowly that at first he barely noticed it was there.

Martin grips back as hard as he’s able and doesn’t let go. He allows himself to be led. He allows himself to be helped.

* * *

They get on the first train going to Scotland, and it’s crowded. They manage to get two seats next to each other, but they can’t really talk, not with everyone else in the carriage pressed so close, and Martin isn’t sure he wants to anyway; he has a feeling that if he tried the words would get stuck in his throat. There are few things lonelier than being trapped in a crowd of strangers who know nothing about you and don’t care to find out. Bags and cases piled on his lap, he stares determinedly out of the window and tries to remember who, and where, he is.

An hour in, Jon reaches out and takes hold of Martin’s hand.

The landscape passes by outside the Perspex window, cranes and office blocks and warehouses giving way to empty fields. At Newcastle, the carriage empties, and Martin allows himself a quiet breath of relief. With Jon’s help they manage to shift their things to the now-empty luggage rack, before moving to a table seat. He’s expecting Jon to sit opposite, but instead he slides in alongside, pressing up against him. Martin feels that warm point of contact through every inch of his stupid yearning body, and he has to fight not to just pull Jon as close as he possibly can, to reach out and map the contours of cheek and jaw and collarbone and spine. He doesn’t, obviously. He doesn’t know if he’s even _allowed._ They haven’t talked about – this, about them. About how they’re going to do this. The normal rules of progression don’t exactly apply.

Sometimes they talk. (It’s just good to hear another person’s voice, even if it’s not saying anything of importance.) Sometimes they’re quiet. Outside the sun has begun to sink down towards the horizon, becoming a reddish coin against the darkening skin of the sky. A tinny recorded announcement repeats the names of the stops.

It’s fully dark when Martin feels Jon’s fingers shift in his. He is sure that Jon is about to let go. With an effort he swallows his disappointment; it’s fine, Jon’s hand is probably cramping up after all this time, and besides they’re literally sitting next to each other, Martin is absolutely _not_ in a position to complain. But that’s not what happens. Jon twitches again, and then he wriggles closer and leans his head on Martin’s shoulder, lacing their fingers together even more tightly. “Going to try’n get some sleep,” he says, breath warm on Martin’s neck. “Wake me up when we arrive?”

Martin tries to force his muscles to relax. He wonders if Jon can hear his pulse, fluttering in his chest and throat. There’s soft hair tickling the underside of his jaw. His whole body feels electric, charged, like his blood has turned to static, and when he finally manages to say something it comes out a little croaky. “Of course.”

Jon sighs. It sounds faintly relieved, as if he was waiting for permission. He shifts, getting comfortable. “Mm. Thanks.”

Martin is sure that he won’t fall asleep – it seems an impossibility, considering how keyed up he’s feeling – but somehow the regular breaths against his skin, and the motion of the train, are enough to send him off. It’s not a deep sleep; he drifts in and out, his mind pleasingly fuzzy, and when he opens his eyes again properly it’s light and there are cows outside the window – proper Scottish cows, Highland cows, with long pointy horns and brown fur that looks like it’s been inexpertly blow-dried.

This is so wonderful that Martin momentarily forgets about Jon, still passed out with his face against Martin’s neck, and sits bolt upright to get a better look. He presses his forehead against the window. Beside him, Jon – deprived of his pillow and none too pleased about it – makes a grumpy, enquiring sort of noise.

“Cows!” Martin says, too excited to formulate a proper sentence, and he points.

Jon slides into a vaguely seated position and squints out of the window. One side of his collar is sticking up, and his glasses are hanging sideways, perilously close to falling off. “Ugh. What? What am I looking at?”

Martin reaches out and hooks the glasses back over his ear.

“Aha,” says Jon. “Yes, that’s better, thank you.” He gives Martin a quick smile that definitely _doesn’t_ make fireworks go off in his chest, and refocuses. Then he sees the cattle. His dark eyes go wide. “Oh, I _see,”_ he says, very seriously, and tilts his head. “Cows.”

“Guess we really are in Scotland now,” Martin says.

“Certainly seems that way.”

They glance at each other, and – for no real reason – start to laugh. Martin cracks first, a hand over his mouth, and then Jon catches it: leans forwards, eyes screwing up, both of them giggling like schoolchildren. Nothing’s particularly funny. It’s just – well. They’ve made it. After everything, in spite of everything. They’ve made it.

They’re _alive._

* * *

The safehouse is a tiny thing, really – not much more than a shack, tucked away into the side of a steep hill. When Martin drops the bags on the front step and turns the key in the lock, he has to lean his not-inconsiderable weight against the door and shove hard before it opens. Damp air escapes. “After you,” he says to Jon, a little awkwardly.

Jon smiles at him again, sliding past. Martin gathers up their things and follows.

Inside the walls are painted with peeling whitewash, and the floorboards are worn smooth with age. There’s no hallway. Just a living room, and beyond that a tiny kitchen fitted with an ancient Rayburn range and a grimy window that looks out over the valley. It’s freezing cold. Martin wraps his arms tightly around himself, willing his teeth not to chatter. His breath comes out of his mouth in pale plumes of fog.

The far end of the living room is dominated by the fireplace. It’s a monstrous brick-and-stone thing that takes up almost the whole wall, flanked by a coal scuttle and a rusted iron grate to protect the floor from stray sparks. Martin is gratified to see that there’s some firewood in it already, although he doesn’t have the first clue about how to actually _build_ a fire. “We can try and get that going later,” he says to Jon, who is scrabbling through the sparsely-stocked bookshelf in search of anything interesting.

Jon, preoccupied, doesn’t answer directly. “Murder mysteries,” he says in disgust, abandoning the search. “It’s murder mysteries and crime thrillers all the way down. Doesn’t Daisy have anything _else?”_

“What were you hoping for?” Martin teases. “Romance novels?”

He’s joking, but Jon’s face takes on an unmistakeable flush. He coughs slightly, in the way that he does when he doesn’t want to admit to something. “No way,” Martin says, laughing in disbelief. “Seriously?”

“It’s not what it – look, some of them are actually quite good, and just because I – ”

“You don’t need to defend yourself,” Martin says. “It’s sweet. You were one of those kids who sneakily read your nan’s Jilly Cooper books in the bath, weren’t you?”

Jon covers his face. It only just manages to hide the flush that’s now creeping down to his collarbones. “Shut up,” he says into his hands.

They scope out the upper floor next. At the top of the narrow flight of stairs is a small landing with two doors, light falling in a pale square from the window. There are dead flies and a couple of wasps scattered across the dusty sill. It’s cold up here, too. “We can buy a space heater next time we’re in town,” Jon says quietly, seeing him shiver, and Martin just presses his lips together and nods. It’s stupid. He’s being stupid. This place is perfect – or, well, not _perfect,_ but it’s safe and isolated and it has Jon in it, which is about as close to perfect as things are likely to get, these days.

The door on the right leads into a small bathroom, the one on the left to a bedroom. There’s a rag rug on the floor, and the bed itself is a double, fitted with a rather nice patchwork quilt that looks hand-stitched. Bed. Singular.

“Well, this all seems,” says Jon, then stops, seemingly having come to the same realisation.

“Yes,” says Martin, “it’s very.” And then he stops talking too.

There’s a bit of a silence. Martin finds himself suddenly and painfully aware of every inch of his body, how much space it takes up, and he shifts his weight, trying unsuccessfully to make himself smaller. “I’ll take the couch, if you want,” he says after several seconds have gone by, because Jon’s discomfort is palpable in that small room.

Jon blinks, as if that’s not what he was expecting to hear. “Oh. Well, absolutely y-you _can?_ If that’s what you want? I don’t mind, personally, but – ”

“Wait, wait. What do you mean, you don’t mind?”

“I mean. Er. Sharing. It’s quite all right with me, that is, if it’s all right with you, but – ”

“ – oh, no, I’m totally fine with that, I just wouldn’t want to – ”

“ – impose, or – ”

They both stop talking at the same time and glance sideways at each other, Martin tentatively hopeful, Jon looking like he wants to sink through the floor. Then abruptly Jon’s face collapses into a tired smile and he shakes his head, passing a hand across his eyes. “This all feels rather too familiar,” he says. “Let’s just – stop worrying about it, shall we?”

Abruptly Martin feels a curious sense of lightness, lightness and space, as if someone has lifted up the lid of a box. The bands around his chest loosen. “Yeah,” he says, and lets a little huff of breath out through his nose. It’s almost a laugh. It isn’t quite. “Yeah, that sounds good to me.”

They manage to get the fire going by evening. It takes a good deal of trial and error. Jon’s lighter, as it turns out, isn’t the best tool for the job; he nearly burns himself twice, trying to get close enough to set the crumpled-up newspapers alight without catching his arm on the smouldering logs, and it doesn’t help that newspaper goes up like _anything_. “Should’ve let me burn some James Pattersons instead,” Jon says to Martin, who rolls his eyes and pretends he hasn’t heard.

What little food they brought – tins of spaghetti hoops, sausage rolls, oven-ready lasagne – is eaten sitting on the floor by the fire, although Jon’s bad leg starts to protest after a while and he has to shift to one of the armchairs. There aren’t any curtains on the downstairs windows. Outside the night is deep and impossibly black, like velvet, and freckled with stars. Martin’s never seen so many stars. You don’t get them in London. Too much light pollution and all that. “I might make another cup of tea,” he says to Jon, who’s half-dozing already, head tilted back. “Do you want some?”

Jon rouses with a start, blinking confusedly. “What? Ah, no, no thank you, Martin. I might head upstairs to bed, actually. Don’t worry, I’ll leave the light on for you.”

Ah, yes. He’ll leave the bedroom light on. For Martin. Because they share a bedroom now. And a bed, apparently. Hoping that the redness in his cheeks can be passed off as simple proximity to the fire, Martin says, “Sure. I’ll try not to wake you up.”

Jon gives him a squinty-eyed look that’s almost catlike. He slides off the sofa, wobbles over towards where Martin is, and sits down beside him. Looks at him straight on, unblinking.

Martin looks back, part endeared and part unnerved. Jon almost never makes direct eye contact. When he does, the effect is somewhere between ‘intense’ and ‘overwhelming’. “Martin, I just wanted to say that I’m glad,” Jon begins – and although his voice still has that odd formality that it takes on when he’s nervous, there’s a confidence underneath it too – “that you are here. With me. I’m glad we made it.”

Martin doesn’t know what to say. (Actually, that’s not true. He knows exactly what he wants to say, but he’s afraid that if he starts saying it he won’t be able to stop.) He restricts himself to a quiet, “Yeah. Me too.”

Then he waits, because Jon looks like he wants to say something else. His mouth works for a moment. He opens his hand, closes it into a fist, looks away – and finally shakes his head, clearly deciding against it. “Well. Goodnight, then,” he says, and gives an awkward little jerk of the head, as if dismissing a casual acquaintance. He makes to get up again.

“Oh, for – come here,” Martin says, torn between amusement and exasperation.

He reaches for Jon, and Jon goes easily, folding into the embrace. It’s quick. It lasts only seconds, and then Martin squeezes Jon’s shoulders and lets go. Jon leans back with an expression of startled pleasure. He ducks his head and says, “I’ll see you upstairs, then.”

Martin finishes his tea slowly, allowing it to warm his still-cold hands – cold, in spite of the fire. He watches the stars. None of the constellations are familiar. It would be nice, he thinks, if he could learn them, learn their names. Jon might know. He’ll ask him in the morning.

The lamp is on, as promised. He can see the hunched shape of Jon curled up underneath the quilt, dark hair spread out on the pillow. Swallowing down the funny feeling in his stomach, Martin lifts the blanket and crawls in beside him. Then he clicks the light off.

Immediately the room is swallowed up in blackness. There’s no moon (the curtains block it out) and no streetlights (well, _obviously_ ). The wind makes itself known by whistling through the gaps in the ill-fitting windows, occasionally rising to a keening wail that sounds almost animalistic. The bedsheets smell musty and unslept-in. Martin lies rigid, arms crossed over his chest, and tries very hard not to feel small and scared and lonely. He tries, but as usual, he fails.

Something rustles. There’s a half-awake murmur from the other side of the bed.

“Night, Jon,” Martin whispers, just to hear the way it sounds in his mouth. His eyes are prickling suddenly. He doesn’t know why. He blinks sharply, several times, trying to get a hold of himself. The darkness he sees when his eyes close is not quite as thick as the darkness he sees when they are open.

No answer. Only more rustling. It sounds like Jon is rolling over. And then Martin’s next inhale snags in his chest, because Jon is _right there,_ his hand fumbling over the shape of Martin’s chest and shoulder, seemingly reassuring himself that everything is as it should be. Martin holds his breath. It feels, and he is fully aware of how ridiculous this sounds, like a rare bird has alighted on his hand, and that if he moves so much as a muscle it will take fright and fly away again. Jon lets out a long sigh, half-satisfied and half-exhausted, and then he’s wriggling closer, pressing up alongside, hooking one leg over Martin’s thigh if as he’s trying to trap him in place.

Martin remains frozen. Jon’s slight weight, his impossible warmth, the smell of him and the way Martin can feel his chest rising and falling – it’s all just skirting the edge of overstimulation, and he isn’t sure whether he wants to pull away or move closer. Not that they _could_ be much closer – although he supposes Jon could be lying on his chest, that would be nice, certainly something to think about. His heart is thundering a million miles an hour. He wonders if Jon can hear it.

“All right?” Jon whispers.

Martin lies still.

There’s no going back from this, he thinks. And then he wonders if that isn’t the whole point.

With a sudden burst of daring he raises his arm and wraps it securely around Jon’s back, keeping him where he is. “Yes. Goodnight,” he whispers back. “And… sleep well.” The second part is half-swallowed by a yawn. He is, all of a sudden, unbearably tired. His eyes keep trying to close on their own.

Jon sighs in response – Martin feels the warm exhale against his shoulder – and mumbles, “See you in the morning.”

It’s not exactly a promise, but Martin knows it’s the closest he’s going to get.

* * *

They’ve been practically living on top of each other for nearly a week before it happens.

It feels a lot like being on holiday, or at least how Martin imagines being on holiday must feel like: sort of in between things, removed from everyday life, floating above the real world and looking down on it with detached interest. Nothing outside the bubble seems to matter much. His world has shrunk to the size of one small house on the side of a hill, and the village below it, and the distant blue humps of mountains, and Jon.

He didn’t really get to go on holiday as a kid – they didn’t have a lot of money, and then his mum got ill, and his dad never seemed particularly inclined to take him anywhere. There was a school trip once. He remembers that. To Hindleap Warren – he’d been nine, they’d stayed in log cabins (much nicer-looking on the outside than the inside), and the boy in the bunk below him had complained because Martin apparently moved around too much and made the bed squeak. It had still been kind of fun, though.

This is much better. It smells different from home. Cleaner. And he feels more real, more like himself, than he has in a long time.

It’s not perfect, of course. They both know this snow-globe of an existence can’t last – but that’s all the more reason to take advantage of it while they can. The two of them space out their trips to the village as carefully as possible, trying not to go there more often than is necessary. It helps that the shop is closed over the weekend. Martin goes with Jon, and keeps him close, and when he starts to get that look in his eyes – that hungry look, irises sheened even brighter than usual, pupils blown just a little too wide – Martin is always quick to clamp a hand around his upper arm and lead him outside as unobtrusively as possible.

They’ve had a couple of near misses. All the same, things have gone remarkably smoothly so far. So smoothly, in fact, that when they checked the cupboards this morning and found them empty Martin had no qualms about suggesting another trip (their second in three days). Jon had agreed readily. Now it’s simply a race to get there and back before the predicted storm reaches them, because out of all the practicalities that Martin remembered to pack, he neglected to bring an umbrella.

Martin is hunting for his socks, anxiously checking the forecast as he does. The storm isn’t due to hit for another hour, so if they set off now they should be fine. Jon is trying to get his coat on and do up his shoelaces at the same time, and failing miserably at both tasks; Martin allows himself a happy few moments of watching man and coat battle for dominance, then takes pity and steps forward. “Jon, no, you’ve got both arms in the same sleeve. Look. Just let me…” He helps Jon out of the tangle. “Unbelievable. How have you even managed to do this?”

“Oh, hush,” Jon says, dispirited. He shrugs off the coat completely and finishes tying his laces. “I was trying to be quick.”

He stands up again. Martin helps him into the coat, and Jon starts to button it up, his right hand still (as always) a little clumsy. He reaches up and straightens the collar. Last on is the scarf, long and dark grey, hiding away the scar from Daisy’s knife. “There you go,” Martin says, and purely on impulse he leans down to drop a quick kiss on Jon’s cheek.

There’s about three glorious seconds in which neither of them really register it, and then they both freeze. Martin feels his mouth tingling, his lips abruptly numb. Why did he – they haven’t even talked about this yet, about _them,_ and what if he’s misread everything and Jon doesn’t feel the same way, or doesn’t realise how all this comes across – clearly Jon cares for him, but what if Martin’s been hopelessly mistaken about the nature of that caring?

Except. Jon must _know._ Mustn’t he? What’s the use of near-omniscience if you can’t see what’s right in front of your eyes?

“Oh,” says Jon, very quietly, and brings a hand up to his face, fingers stopping just short of touching the place where Martin kissed him. He blinks a few times, as if he’s just woken up from a deep sleep. “Well, then.”

“Sorry,” Martin says, taking a step back, “should I not have done that?”

Jon, still looking dazed, shakes his head. “No, it’s fine, I’m just not sure if…” He breaks off.

Martin swallows his disappointment.

It makes sense, really. After all, they’ve had ample time to discuss it. The fact that Jon, ever-curious, hasn’t brought it up is easily explicable: there’s nothing to bring up. That’s that. Jon doesn’t feel the same way. “Sorry,” he says, and thinks he sounds quite calm about it, considering that his hands have turned to ice and all his internal organs have fossilised. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Jon sounds frustrated now.

Martin shakes his head. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s not that, I just – oh, damn it,” Jon says, and then his hand is on Martin’s cheek and jaw, and he sways up on his tiptoes, and kisses him.

On the mouth.

It’s quick. Chaste. But Martin has the distinct impression, from that one brief touch, that this isn’t just consolation. It’s a testing of waters. Dipping in one toe, checking the temperature, withdrawing, preparing to dive deep.

Everything in Martin’s head goes totally silent. Even when Jon pulls away and stares up at him, waiting for a response, he can’t do anything except stare back, mute and stunned. “So: verdict?” Jon says, and he sounds so awkward about it that Martin is startled into a laugh.

“Um. Good? Definitely good?” He half-covers his face, still with that urge to giggle – something to do with the release of tension, probably, although God knows he still feels tense enough. “This is ridiculous. We haven’t even gone on a _date_ yet.”

“We are living together, though,” Jon points out, reasonably enough.

The first pinpricks of hope are starting to appear, pushing up through the anxiety like crocuses in spring. “Right. Yeah, I suppose we are, aren’t we?”

“Given the circumstances, I think we’re entitled to go about this in a somewhat less-than-linear way.” Jon’s voice is dry, but it’s clear by the flush on his face and neck that he’s not quite as composed as he makes out. “Can I,” he says, and gestures, touching a finger to his lips, “again?”

Martin breathes. He’s calm. Suddenly, somehow, he is absolutely calm. “Yes,” he says, and it’s as though something huge is unfolding within him, the vessel of his body too small to contain it. “Please. Yes.”

It’s tentative at first, nothing more than the press of dry lips. He can feel Jon’s lashes flutter against his cheek. Then Martin opens his mouth, just a little, and Jon’s arm finds its way around his waist, bringing him closer, and they’re kissing properly.

Not perfectly, by any means – it’s a messy and inexpert affair, mostly on Jon’s part, all awkward angles and sharp teeth. Somehow, though, that makes it better. Makes it more _real._ Martin licks into Jon’s mouth, feeling the answering press of tongue against his own, and Jon makes a soft sound in response: not quite a moan, but close to it. Hearing that sends a sparking feeling through Martin’s whole body. It’s like a mild, pleasant electric shock, and it gathers in his stomach and warms him from the inside out.

He slides a hand around to the back of Jon’s head, into his hair, guiding him into a better angle. Jon lets himself be guided. Not only that, but he responds with an eagerness that Martin suspects is a surprise for them both. They kiss for a few minutes longer before Martin pulls back – just a little – and sucks lightly on Jon’s lower lip, drawing it in between his teeth.

Jon’s hand tightens around his waist. “Interesting,” he murmurs into the space between their mouths, and laughs.

“Interesting,” Martin echoes. He drops his head down, burying it in the warm curve between Jon’s neck and shoulder. For a moment he simply rests there, breathing in cheap detergent and lingering cigarette smoke; then he parts his lips, mouthing at the skin of Jon’s throat. Jon makes a faint, choked-off sound.

“You like that?” Martin says. He tries a hint of teeth, just experimentally, and feels Jon shudder against him.

“Yes, it’s, it’s good, but Martin, you… you should probably be aware that I don’t. That I’m not exactly, um.”

He’s starting to tense up again. In an attempt to spare him the explanation, Martin says, “I know you don’t like sex, if that’s what you’re trying to tell me.”

This is meant to be reassuring. It clearly isn’t. Jon flinches.

“Sorry,” Martin says, lifting his head, “should I not have – ?”

“No, it’s… it’s fine. I just. Didn’t realise that you knew.”

“Well. I didn’t, exactly? People said stuff and I just – look, it’s fine, is what I’m trying to say. It’s really not a problem. I’m sorry if you thought it would be.”

Jon nods. He keeps nodding.

“C’mere,” Martin says. He puts his arms around Jon’s shoulders and draws him in, stroking his hair until the tension starts to give way to a loose, boneless relaxation. “There you go. And hey, if I ever do something you don’t like, you will tell me, right? Straight away. I don’t ever want you to be uncomfortable. You promise?”

“OK,” Jon says, a little hoarsely. And then, “What you were doing before, that was… nice? Sort of just the right side of too much. You can keep doing that. If you want.”

“Maybe in a bit,” Martin says. “Right now, though, I’m thinking we still probably need to get to the shops before they close. Unless you like the idea of eating nothing except baked beans on toast for the next two days.”

“Of course. Yes. Shops. Right you are.”

Still slightly pink-faced, Jon pulls away and goes to unlock the door. He only stumbles twice on the way there.

“To be continued later!” Martin calls after him, laughing.

A bubble of joy is beginning to swell in his chest. He lets it expand and tries not to think about it too much, refusing to look at it directly or place too much pressure on it. It’s already so fragile. He can’t bear for it to break.

* * *

When Martin showers he does it at night, with the lights off.

The shower itself is a rusty old thing that sputters and groans, but the water is hot, which is more than either of them were hoping for. Martin likes showering – it’s one of the few times when the numbness goes away completely, replaced by warmth and sensation. (Sleeping is another thing that helps, and skin-to-skin touch. Luckily, he’s had plenty of both since they arrived.) What he hates is the steam. He doesn’t want to look at the blurred, indistinct shape of his own face in the mirror. Doesn’t want to watch his surroundings turn misty with water vapour. The first time that happened his stomach lurched and his legs went weak. He’d barely been able to switch the water off before his muscles gave out and he sank to the floor of the shower, huddled up with his head between his knees, breathing irregularly and waiting for the nausea to pass. 

The noise helps, too. He thought the countryside would be quiet, but there’s always sounds happening somewhere – the mournful cry of a curlew floating up from the valley, sheep bleating, the creak of a floorboard as Jon moves around upstairs. In the Lonely everything was quiet. Cold. Even now, free from the creeping fog and the silence that settles like heavy snow and swallows up even the smallest sounds, Martin still feels cold. It’s not the violent kind of cold that makes your teeth rattle and your hands shake. It’s bone-deep, like ice water filling him up, creeping into every vein and empty space, running down to the tips of his fingers.

He’s begun to adjust to it. _Has_ adjusted to it, in fact, to the point where anything that breaks past it feels wrong at first, sort of painful, like pins and needles, like holding his hands under a tap that’s turned up too high. Eventually the sensation evens out, and then it’s fine. Still. It’s going to take a bit of getting used to. And when he’s around people – around crowds –

Sometimes he misses it.

No. That’s not right. He doesn’t miss it, he could never miss it, but there was something oddly peaceful in not having to care about anything. Losing that capacity to feel loss, or fear, or pain – it had its benefits. Other people, he’d told himself at the time, were in fact an unnecessary complication, an extraneous variable, a flaw in the pattern. No people meant no one to hurt you. No one to reach out and shove things into your head that weren’t supposed to be there. No one to die. No one to mourn for. In many ways, it had been easier.

Now he’s no longer alone. He can touch people and talk to them and look at them. The world is real and present and so solid that he could almost take it in his hand like an orange, feel the weight of it, squeeze it until the juice ran down his arm. There’s a future. It could be good. They could be good, maybe.

It’s wonderful. He’s never felt so terrified in all his life.

They both have bad dreams, of course. Jon’s are loud and panicky, half-feral. He doesn’t like to be touched for a while after he wakes up. Doesn’t like anything on top of him, around him, caging him in. Martin found that out the hard way the first time he tried to shake him out of a night terror and received a punch in the arm that left him bruised for days. Jon apologised over and over, once he was awake enough to realise where he was and who he was with – desperate, almost-incoherent apologies that bordered on hysteria. It had taken over half an hour before he calmed down, longer still before he allowed himself to be held.

Martin’s nightmares are quiet. Harder to notice. He just wakes up with a feeling of yawning absence, like crude surgery has been performed on him during the night. It's as though someone wrenched open the cage of his ribs, seized his heart in a firm grip and cut it right out of his chest, leaving bloody loops and ventricles behind. The place where it's supposed to be gapes wide and dark. Whenever this happens he can't do anything except lie there still and cold as a corpse, listening to Jon breathing next to him, feeling the space inside and around him expanding until it’s the only thing that's left.

On the morning of the tenth day he wakes up feeling emptier than normal and turns over, checking to make sure that Jon is still there. Listening for that steady breathing. But there’s no sound. The other half of the bed is empty. The pillow, when he touches it, is cold. He gets up. He opens the wardrobe. His clothes are all still there. Jon’s are not. There is only one suitcase under the bed. There is only one pair of shoes by the door.

Martin tells himself, quite firmly, not to panic. There is an explanation. Has to be. Putting on his slippers, he goes downstairs, expecting to see a note lying on the table – something to the effect of _Gone back to London to pick up some stuff, be seeing you shortly, please don’t worry. —Jon._

But the table is empty too. The bare space of the kitchen – was it always this bare? – hangs around him, giving nothing away. The window above the sink has a view out over the hills, which are frosted with half-melted snow, and above them the sky is the colour of breath. He understands with sudden and total clarity that the reprieve is over. He is once again alone. He will never love or be loved by another person. The knowledge settles deep into his bones, and with it comes a familiar spreading chill. In the distance, where the hills meet the horizon, the fog is beginning to close in.

He wakes up.

It’s still dark. He doesn’t even have to look over to know that Jon is beside him. He looks anyway. Sees Jon’s face on the pillow, turned towards him, and the soft shape of his half-open mouth. Martin reaches a trembling hand to trace the sharp angle of his cheekbone. Jon's skin is warm. He makes a faint, sleepy noise as Martin touches him, but doesn't wake. It doesn't matter. He's there. He's really _real._

Martin withdraws his hand.

The first sob takes him by surprise. It comes up from deep down inside his chest, as if he’s swallowed something horrible and is choking on it. No noise, though. Martin spent much of his early life learning how to cry silently and unobtrusively, and it’s a skill he’s maintained well into adulthood, except for when he’s alone and there’s no need to keep up the act. He rolls on to his side, facing away from Jon, and clamps one hand over his mouth. Holds it there to keep in the sounds. He can’t stop his body from shaking, though, the crying shuddering through him like a force he can’t control. Which it is, in a way. Martin might just as well try to prevent a storm from breaking. He gathers a fistful of blanket and presses it tightly against his mouth and weeps.

Movement. The shifting of bedclothes. “Martin?” Jon says, muzzy with sleep.

He freezes. 

“What’s wrong?”

He wants to say _nothing, I'm fin_ _e, go back to sleep,_ but he can’t talk. Can’t even take his hand away from his mouth. If he did, the sounds might spill out, and then there would be no going back. Jon rarely sleeps through the night. Martin refuses to be responsible for waking him. He stays as still as possible, every muscle tense as a bowstring, praying that Jon will drop it and leave him alone.

A hand touches his shoulder, butterfly-light and tentative. When he doesn’t pull away, Jon rubs his back, just once. The warmth bleeds through Martin’s thin T-shirt. It feels like a trail of fire.

He jerks again as another sob tries to fight its way up. By the way Jon tenses he knows that he felt it, too, and curses himself. “Martin,” Jon says. “Look at me.”

He curls up tighter.

Jon tugs at his shoulder, trying to get him to roll over on to his back. He lets it happen. It’s easier. The damage is done now, anyway; they’re both awake, and Jon knows something’s not right. He keeps his eyes closed, even though he knows that the moonlight is probably betraying him, and waits.

Scarred fingers touch his face, tracing the damp streaks, brushing away the tears that are still seeping out from beneath his closed lids. He can hear Jon breathing. His own breathing is ragged and uneven, trembling with every exhale. “It’s all right,” Jon says. “I’m here. I’ve got you. Martin, please open your eyes.”

There’s nothing he wants to do less. But Jon’s voice is persuasive, even when it’s not laced through with compulsion, and so he opens his eyes and looks.

Jon’s eyes are still squinted half-shut with sleep, and there’s that peculiar silvery sheen to them that never goes away, these days. There’s something animal about it, like how cats’ eyes shine when the light hits them, turning blank and opaque. It doesn’t frighten him. He’s used to it now. “Sorry,” Martin says. “Didn’t meant to wake you up.”

His voice is choked and snotty. Jon shakes his head. “Don’t be sorry.”

He doesn’t say _are you OK,_ or ask him what happened, something for which Martin is profoundly grateful. His hand comes up and traces Martin’s mouth, silently asking for permission. Martin nods, giving it. Jon kisses him so lightly that it’s barely a kiss at all, more a brush of lips against chapped lips, but even so it starts him off again, and he has to press his lips together tightly to stay quiet. “Shh,” Jon whispers, “it’s OK, shh,” and he wriggles closer until he’s lying half on top of Martin, head on his chest.

The weight of him is grounding. Martin can feel the tremors lessening, just a little, the hole in his chest beginning to close up. It still hurts. Turns out that having your heart hacked out of your chest is a lot less painful than having it shoved back in. He gasps and gulps and shudders and, little by little, gets himself back under control. As he does, he feels Jon take his hands. He's rubbing his thumbs over Martin's wrists, coaxing them up to wrap around him – one between his shoulder-blades, the other on his lower back.

It feels strange, after so many years of being careful about how and when and where to touch. He ignores the strangeness and holds on, tightly, fiercely, and Jon clings back. Martin slips his hand under Jon’s shirt and presses it against his skin, feeling the heat of him. He runs his fingers down the knobs of Jon’s spine, traces the wings of his shoulderblades, and marvels at the way he’s all sharp edges and angles where Martin is all softness. They shouldn’t fit together as well as they do.

“Isn’t it weird,” Martin whispers out into the dark room, “how we’ve sort of done everything backwards? First eloping, then moving in, sharing a bed, kissing…”

“Mm.” Jon breathes in deeply, and his ribs rise underneath Martin’s palm. “Although I will point out that we still haven’t got to the ‘talking about it’ stage.”

“Do we even need to?”

“It – might be a good idea, eventually? Perhaps not right now, I’m not quite awake enough, but just for the sake of clarity: I – care about you.” Jon exhales suddenly, annoyed with himself. “No, that’s not it. I suppose it’d be more accurate to say that I love you. Very much.” His gaze flicks to Martin, suddenly sharp. “That is all right, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely,” Martin assures him. “And – well, I love you too. Obviously.”

“Really? That’s good. Would’ve been a bit embarrassing if you didn’t.”

Martin feels another tear make its way from the corner of his eye into his hair. He puts up a hand to smear it away. “Thanks,” he says. “For saying that. You didn’t have to.”

“Yes, I did,” Jon says. He twists slightly against Martin, and stretches up to kiss his cheek. “Go back to sleep. I’ll still be here tomorrow.”

“You promise?”

Uncompromising, all honesty and conviction, Jon replies: “I promise.”

Martin closes his eyes.

When he next wakes, there will be no fog gathering in the valley. Only sunlight, clear and uncompromising. They will get up early, and make breakfast (orange juice, toast with marmalade, poached eggs). Or they will sleep in. There will be birds – buzzards, maybe, or geese flying in ragged V-formations – and long-haired cows; there will be hushed late-night conversations, and arguments over exactly how long you’re supposed to boil potatoes for before you mash them. They will start work on the small tin-roofed outhouse, getting rid of the cobwebs and clutter and converting it into a studio for Jon to record statements in private. Or they will hike down to the narrow and bitingly cold stream that divides one hill from another, and follow it as it twists and turns its way northward, past the flinty slopes and the ruins of an old barn left to rot in a field. These are all possibilities. For the time being they simply huddle close, skin to skin in the dark, and wait for the future to arrive.


End file.
